Work Must Provide a Living
"A livelihood is based on costs of basic human needs and not an obsolete measure of poverty or a minimum wage set by market demand for ever greater profitability. The current national focus on jobs for infrastructure building, environmental improvement, and social investment must create work that provides employed people with an income that sustains a family.
"Furthermore, employment programs should be linked to education and skills building for future opportunity and advancement for all who want to pursue new possibilities. Having to work should not preclude people from gaining more education.
"But equally important, job expansion efforts must go beyond traditional boots-and-shovels jobs that are largely filled by men. Low-income women too must have pathways to sustainable employment. Much of the nation's contemporary labor market demands different but equally valuable skills — including the capacity to interact with and care for other people — that are at the heart of human service and care employment. Society relies on these services, and though some are highly professional, many are not. In particular, families that include aging kin in need of home or residential care; families that rely on day care, after-school services, and preschool services for the children of employed parents; and families that include someone with disabilities together represent much of the national population. We have always relied primarily on low-income women, immigrants, and people of color to provide critical care labor yet have never treated the workforce as deserving a sustainable wage. This must change. These millions of workers make it possible for millions of others to leave children and elderly and disabled kin and go about their working lives and contribute to the larger society. Both the jobs that build the physical infrastructure and the jobs that sustain humanity deserve pay that provides a living. All jobs in the United States must provide a livelihood, not just a wage."
