It’s no secret that many job seekers want to earn enough money to pay their rent, mortgage, car, food, and other basic necessities, but employers are still not willing to pay them enough for those tasks, according to a new study by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
The report found that employers in most sectors are still unwilling to pay employees enough to meet their basic needs.
For instance, employers in manufacturing are still reluctant to pay more than $50,000 a year for the same position.
In construction, for instance, workers earning $20,000 per year have been paid $37,000 for their first six months of employment.
Even for highly skilled jobs, the report found, employers still are reluctant to make those kinds of payments.
For instance, only 33 percent of construction workers in manufacturing earned $20 per hour.
In contrast, nearly half of the workers in agriculture, forestry, and fishing were paid at least $50 per hour in their first year of employment, the study found.
And nearly 60 percent of retail salespeople were paid more than the $45 per hour they were earning in their second year.
The researchers noted that while companies have been forced to pay workers more to cover basic expenses, the number of jobs that remain unfilled has increased in recent years.
“Despite recent wage increases, job vacancies in the U.S. are at an all-time high,” said the report’s lead author, Brian Pugh, an associate professor at the University of Illinois.
“We have an economy that is rapidly shrinking the number and the quality of jobs available.”
Employers have been cutting back on their workforce over the past several years, but Pugh and his co-author, Laura Smith, say it’s not enough.
They say that as the number for part-time work has increased over the last decade, companies are making more cuts to their workforces.
“Companies are reducing their work force and reducing their hours,” Pugh said.
“They’re not taking the extra workers, and that’s really hurting the economy.”
The researchers found that most employers are reluctant in many cases to pay full-time workers more than they were before.
“The number of employees who are able to work full time is very small,” Poyers said.
The gap between the wages paid to part-timers and full-timing workers is wider than in the past.
For example, in 2006, the median full-timer wage was $16.86 an hour.
By 2017, that number had risen to $20.46 an hour, and Poyer says the gap is still growing.
“What’s really troubling about the wage gap is that employers are not paying workers enough,” he said.
“This is really hurting us as a country.”
Companies have been paying their employees less in recent decades, Poyering said, but they are not getting paid enough to cover their basic expenses.
The researchers say the lack of income growth is partly because the minimum wage has stagnated.
Employers need to pay part- and full time workers more in order to keep them full- and part- time, Pugh added.
Employees need to earn more in the first place if they want to stay in the workforce, Puyol said.
If they’re not getting enough, then they’re going to leave.
“That’s really the question: What kind of work are you getting paid for?”
Puyol believes the solution is to offer workers a guaranteed hourly wage.
He said it would help workers stay in their jobs, and the government should pay workers a minimum hourly rate for every job it’s willing to provide.
“If companies want to pay this level of money, then employers should be able to do so,” he told MSNBC.
“I think it would create a virtuous cycle.
We would see people coming in and being paid more, and they would then stay in that job.”
