A new report from Demos details how America’s retail businesses keep millions of working women and their families in poverty. The report, Retail’s Choice: How Raising Wages and Improving Schedules for Women in the Retail Industry Would Benefit America, shows how low pay, erratic scheduling and weak benefits have a disproportionate affect on women, who make up the bulk of the retail workforce. One of the purposes of the report, according to Demos, is to shift the debate about gender inequity away from female executives to the lowest-paid positions in the most common occupation in America. Demos estimates that retail industry practices lead to more than $40 billion in lost wages annually.
The report’s author, Amy Traub, directly challenges the retail industry to address the problem:
The nation’s large retailers are in a position to improve the lives of millions of America’s working women and their families—boosting the national economy and creating jobs while also advancing their own outlook for sales growth. Our research shows how improving scheduling, giving workers the hours they need and raising pay to the modest level of $25,000 a year for full-time work can help women succeed.
The report notes that more than 1.3 million women in the retail industry face poverty despite having jobs and that establishing a wage floor of $25,000 for full-time, year-round workers would raise most of those women and their families out of poverty. Additionally, such an increase would benefit many male workers, would boost GDP between $6.9 billion and $8.9 billion and create more than 100,000 new jobs.
This article was originally printed on AFL-CIO on June 3, 2014. Reprinted with permission.
About the Author: Kenneth Quinnell is a long-time blogger, campaign staffer and political activist whose writings have appeared on AFL-CIO, Daily Kos, Alternet, the Guardian Online, Media Matters for America, Think Progress, Campaign for America’s Future and elsewhere.
