The Working Poor Summary

Poverty is a tremendous problem in the United States. Unfortunately, many of the families who are living in poverty have much more difficulty finding good jobs than those who are not. In The Working Poor, by David Shipler, there are many different circumstances that cause people to get to that point. Many of those in poverty have too many barriers in their way for them to be able to rise above the poverty line and support themselves. Some circumstances that cannot be avoided like disabilities or being born into a poor household can create biases that make it more difficult to get employment. Seeing what causes many to become impoverished and how some people were able to rise above the poverty line may be beneficial to others and possibly prevent

Without these resources it would be impossible for many people to support themselves and their families. In The Working Poor, David Shipler shows how some of the citizens who grew up impoverished never got the proper education they need to get a good job. The Center for Employment Training in Washing D.C. was there to help them learn basic job skills but it was a challenge. Skills that seem so basic to us were difficult for them to learn, like “the basic of arriving on time, speaking to people, answering the phone, accomplishing a task, believing in themselves.” Without training centers like this one it would be much harder for people that did not possess skills to get any sort of job at all, less likely one that would provide a steady income and enough money to support themselves. Researchers have found that “[m]illions of American breadwinners work hard to support their families. But, despite their effort, almost one in three working families are mired in low-wage jobs that provide inadequate benefits and offer little opportunity for advancement and economic security.” This shows that getting a job is not enough to support a family. Without welfare programs there would be millions of people without the means necessary to survive. When the economy grows it does not help the poor as much as one would think either, “it is the top 5, the top 1, and fractions of the top 1 percent that have received almost all the benefits of the economy’s growth,” because of this the poor cannot rely on the economy at all to help them either. There are many programs that the government provides that are necessary for those who need assistance while they are searching for a job, “[SNAP] currently provides over 47 million participants in about 23 million low-income households with debit cards they can use to purchase food each month.” These sort of programs are necessary to