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VGhippy on 31 October 2011
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HappySqurriel said:
VGhippy said:
Laurel Aitken said:
 

Right nowthe people considered poor in the USA are people with an anual income of less than $22,350 USD. That's not poor in most of the rest of the world!!!


Just to be fair that is the income for a family of 4 to be considered poor by the government, not individuals :P

Edit: For a sole individual in their own household it is under 11k

 

source: http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/11poverty.shtml

Being that McDonalds' starting wage is $8.30/hour, which works out to being (roughly) $16,500/year for a full time employee, how many individuals really earn less than $11,000/year unless they choose to? While it is not really an ideal thing, when I was younger the people I knew who didn't go to school often had 2 jobs (working in the range of 55+ hours per week) at a higher wage than that (this would be about 10 years ago), so I personally find it difficult to believe than many people are forced to live off of that little money

I don't know how similar the US employment situation is to the one in the UK where I live but It's hard to find full time employment at the moment. I hope it's not the same in the US but in the UK it's become more common for companies that would have handed out proper working shifts in the past to put people on 4 or 0 hour contracts so you never know if you will be getter 37 1/2 (standard work week here) or 20 hours (or 4!). It's annoying but large chains like GAME and ASDA are doing this as standard now :( My friend who works at GAME (our equivalent of Gamespot I think) only just managed to get a guaranteed minimum of 25 hours because he was a senior sales advisor.