Do Americans Earn Enough?

If you go to work everyday the belief is that you want to be able to take care of your family on the wages you earn. For many Americans that is something they can only wish and pray for. According to U.S statistics only about 5.2% are making less so why are we still such an impoverished people? In 2011, 73.9 million American workers age 16 and over were paid at hourly rates, representing 59.1 percent of all wage and salary workers. Among those paid by the hour, 1.7 million earned exactly the prevailing Federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. About 2.2 million had wages below the minimum. Together, these 3.8 million workers with wages at or below the Federal minimum made up 5.2 percent of all hourly-paid workers. These numbers are encompassing all Americans but I wanted to know specifically where African Americans fell amongst others. The following are some highlights from the 2011 data. About 5 percent of White hourly-paid workers earned the Federal minimum wage or less, compared with about 6 percent of Blacks and about 3 percent of Asians. Among hourly-paid workers of Hispanic ethnicity, about 5 percent earned the minimum wage or less. So if blacks only make up 6 percent of people earning less than minimum wage or just at that amount what are the rest of you doing? If you woke up today and are headed to work make it count. It seems we are on the right track. Given this data African American incomes are high and we should be on the road to success.

For more information on this topic :
http://www.bls.gov/news.release