As a second Trump administration approaches, we’re running out of time to confirm as many federal judges as possible to provide a check on his presidential power and curb his stated policy priorities.
There are 40 federal judicial vacancies and 16 nominations before the Senate right now—as our civil rights hang in the balance, take action now!
In recent decades, women’s work experience and educational attainment have increased dramatically—but for too many women, especially women of color, job and income prospects remain bleak. In 2016, women made up nearly two-thirds of the nearly 24 million workers in low-wage jobs (defined as jobs that typically pay $11.50 per hour or less), though they make up slightly less than half (47 percent) of the workforce as a whole. Women of color are particularly overrepresented in these jobs. Wages of $11.50 per hour leave a full-time working mother of two with an annual income uncomfortably close to the poverty line, and many low-wage jobs pay just the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
These jobs leave many women and families struggling to make ends meet—and the situation is unlikely to improve on its own: indeed, three of the top five occupations expected to see the most growth in the next decade are female-dominated and low-wage. If policymakers do not take action to ensure that all of the jobs our economy creates allow working people and their families to be economically secure, the future of work for women threatens to be increasingly characterized by precarious jobs with poverty-level wages.
For many people working in the three low-wage, high-growth jobs, low pay is just one of the challenging conditions they face. Jobs in the food service and home health/personal care industries are particularly likely to lack employer- or union-based health insurance; less than half of women working as personal care aides (41 percent) or combined food preparation and serving workers (49 percent), and just 56 percent of women who are home health aides, have health care coverage through their employer or a union. And in states that have not expanded Medicaid, people working in low-wage jobs may have incomes that are above Medicaid eligibility limits but below the eligibility threshold for tax credits to help pay for health insurance through the state Marketplace, leaving them without a source of affordable coverage.
These jobs also frequently lack other benefits—like paid sick days and paid family and medical leave—and feature work schedules that are unstable and unpredictable. For example, an analysis of a nationwide survey found that only 19 percent of food preparation and serving workers and 25 percent of personal care and service workers had access to paid sick days, and in a national survey of early career workers (ages 26-32), about nine in ten workers in food service jobs, and seven in ten home care workers, reported fluctuating work hours. In all of these jobs, at least half of workers reported that they received their schedules one week or less in advance. Unpredictable work schedules and a lack of paid time off can be particularly problematic for parents juggling work and caregiving responsibilities, yet mothers’ share of the three low-wage, high-growth jobs was 29 percent in 2016—1.8 times larger than their share of the overall workforce (16 percent).
