Search results
Although the poor were primarily adults who had not participated in the labor force during the year and children, 6.3 million individuals were among the “working poor” in 2019, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS); this measure decreased from 7.0 million in 2018.
Although the poor were primarily adults who had not participated in the labor force during the year and children, 6.4 million individuals were among the “working poor” in 2021, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS); this measure was essentially unchanged from 2020.
In 2020, the working-poor rate of people in the labor force for 27 weeks or more was 4.1 percent and was little changed from a year earlier, when it reached a series low (4.0 percent). (See chart 1.) Full-time workers remained much less likely to be among the working poor than part-time workers.
This report summarizes data on the working poor. The working poor are people who spent at least 27 weeks in the labor force (that is, working or looking for work) but whose incomes still fell below the official poverty level.
Among people in the labor force for 27 weeks or more in 2019, those with less than a high school diploma had the highest working-poor rate, at 12.8 percent, while those with a bachelor’s degree or higher had the lowest, at 1.4 percent.
In 2017, the working-poor rate—the ratio of the working poor to al l individuals in the labor f orce for at least 27 weeks— was 4.5 percent, 0.4 per centage point lower than the previous year ’s figure.
9 kwi 2015 · Crude rates and conditional risks of poverty among workers vary considerably among racial groups. This article provides a conceptual and empirical baseline for decisions about how best to estimate the magnitude and composition of America's working poor population.
