The retail and restaurant sector – two primary employers of low-wage workers – receive larger public subsidies than the fossil fuel industry in the form of public assistance for the working poor.

At the very least, argues a recent report from Demos, the American government owes employees on its payroll a livable wage. Demos, a research and policy center focused on economic stability, defines low-wage work as “a job paying $12 an hour or less, equivalent to an annual income of about $24,000

Previous research has found that the majority of the jobs added to the economy since the end of the recession pay low wages. Middle-wage and high-wage jobs haven’t seen nearly the same rate of growth, meaning that the economy has traded comfortable jobs for those that merely allow workers to scrape

Big businesses, such as Wal-Mart and McDonalds, get a bad wrap for providing low-wage jobs. But, Americans may be surprised to know that they're funding a low-wage labor pool larger than both of these companies combined do, a new report by Demos, a public policy organization, shows.

Even with a freeze on basic pay rates and unpaid leave days and repeated attacks on the federal workforce, being a federal employee means you have a good, though as of late, a less-lucrative job. That can’t be said by everyone in the federal workplace.

The banks have systematically figured out how to rip off the government,” Lerner says. Part of that ripoff was the LIBOR scandal, which had a “massive consequence on everything,” according to Wallace Turbeville, a former Goldman Sachs employee and current senior fellow at nonpartisan think tank

The vacuous, cheerful expression of the Walmart smiley face has long been associated with the paradoxically dark reality of low-wage work. With the recent fast-food worker walkouts in New York, the golden arches may go down, too, in the annals of class-war symbology.

The average unemployment rate in the first quarter of this year was 7.7 percent. But for African-American workers that rate was 13.6 percent. For Latinos, it was 9.5 percent. And among those who do have jobs, wages are not rising.

Washington – On Wednesday, May 8 at 9 a.m. EST, low-wage workers from around the country employed in a variety of firms operating under federal contracts, loans, and leases will join Members of Congress, community leaders, and local elected officials to announce the launch of Good Jobs Nation—a new

Federal taxpayers employ more low-wage workers than Wal-Mart and McDonald’s combined, a new study calculates.