To add equity data to the national dialogue about growth and prosperity, every week the National Equity Atlas team posts a new chart drawing from the Equity Atlas related to current events and issues.

In what some are calling the largest gathering of tribal nations in 150 years, a multigenerational coalition has assembled in North Dakota to stand with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to halt the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (#NoDAPL). Proponents of the 1,172-mile crude oil pipeline tout the economic benefits of the project in the wake of a declining state economy, but this project is not the way to foster sustainable and equitable growth in North Dakota’s Native communities.

To lift up this Native-led struggle to protect ancestral land and water in Standing Rock, this week’s chart looks at the share of young people ages 16 to 24 in North Dakota who are disconnected from work and school.

In North Dakota, Native American young people are the most likely among the major racial/ethnic groups to be disconnected from work and school. More than one in three Native American young people are neither working nor in school, compared with one in four Latinos and just 5 percent of Whites. Native Americans make up the second largest race/ethnic group in the state, but they continue to face steep barriers to economic inclusion, while inequitable development projects like the Dakota Access Pipeline threaten destruction of their sacred burial sites and water access.

Widespread youth disconnection hurts not only Native Americans and Latinos, but also the North Dakota economy. State policymakers can simultaneously invest in their economies and their most vulnerable populations by building robust cradle-to-career pipelines that support children and families, and by connecting young people of color to opportunities through targeted workforce training programs, apprenticeships, internships, and career academies.

To see how Native Americans fare across other indicators in North Dakota, visit the National Equity Atlas, type in North Dakota, and select an indicator. Download the charts and share them on social media using #equitydata and #NoDAPL.

To add equity data to the national dialogue about growth and prosperity, every week the National Equity Atlas team posts a new chart drawing from the Equity Atlas related to current events and issues.

In honor of #LaborDay and the #Fightfor15, this week’s chart looks at the share of workers earning at least $15/hour in California. In an equitable economy, all workers would earn enough to support their family, or a “living wage.” What constitutes a living wage varies based on family size, but $15/hour is a good benchmark for understanding which groups are least likely to be earning a living wage. The fight for a $15/hour minimum wage is also an important campaign that continues to gain momentum.

In California, among full-time workers ages 25 to 64, Latinos are the least likely to make at least $15/hour. 49 percent of Latino women and 54 percent of Latino men earned at least $15/hour in 2012 compared with 81 percent of White women and 87 percent of White men. Latinos are the single largest ethnic group in California, but they continue to face some of the steepest barriers to economic inclusion.

Low wages among the growing Latino population is bad for families and bad for California’s economy: more money in the hands of workers means greater demand for goods and services. Research shows that companies can pay living wages and remain profitable, in part because paying higher wages reduces turnover and increases productivity.

Thanks to policy changes, we should soon see positive changes on this indicator. The minimum wage in California is currently $10/hour, but earlier this year, state lawmakers struck a deal to gradually raise the state minimum wage to $15/hour by 2022.

To see how the share of workers earning at least $15/hour varies by race/ethnicity and gender in your community, visit the National Equity Atlas, type in your city, region, or state, and select the “By gender” breakdown. Download and tweet at us the chart for your community using #equitydata and #Fightfor15.

By the end of this decade, the majority of youth under age 18 will be people of color. Their ability to succeed in the labor force will determine the strength of our economy in the decades to come. Yet, data on youth disconnectedness show we are failing the very people we are supposed to nurture, educate, and prepare to become the leaders of tomorrow. As the National Equity Atlas shows, there are 5.5 million young people ages 16 to 24 who are “disconnected” — neither working nor in school — and the majority of them are people of color.

Reconnecting these young people to education, skills, and career pathways is critical for their economic futures — and for our national prosperity. A study by scholars at Queens College, City University of New York and Teachers College, Columbia University calculates that every disconnected youth costs society $700,000 throughout their lifetime. To develop targeted solutions, it is critical to understand which youth face the greatest challenges, and that is why we added gender breakdowns to the “Disconnected youth” indicator on the Atlas.

A look at this new data reveals some surprising differences in youth disconnectedness by gender for Black and Latino young people. Below, we examine how youth disconnectedness varies by race and gender nationally, followed by a closer look at cities with the highest rates of disconnected Latinas.

Latinas face particularly high rates of youth disconnectedness

Of all major race and gender combinations, young Native American men are the most likely to be disconnected in the U.S. as a whole: 28 percent of Native American men ages 16 and 24 are neither in school nor working, followed by 25 percent of Native American young women. Young Black men are about as likely as Native American women to be disconnected. An unexpected finding is that one in five young Latinas are disconnected from school and work — a rate four percentage points higher than that for young Latinos.

Black and Native American young men are more likely to be disconnected than their female counterparts, while Latino and Asian and Pacific Islander young men are less likely to be disconnected than their female counterparts.

Cities with the highest share of disconnected Latinas 

To explore how youth disconnectedness varies for young Latinas across the largest 100 cities, we looked at the cities with the highest and lowest rates of disconnection among Latinas. There was enough data on Latinas ages 16 to 24 in 69 of the 100 largest cities. The share of Latinas in this age group who are not working or in school ranges from 40 percent in Detroit to 2 percent in Irvine, California. Detroit also has the greatest overall share of disconnected youth at 30 percent of all young people, but Latinas have the highest rate of disconnectedness in that city—6 percentage points higher than the share of disconnected Black men. In four of the five cities with the largest share of disconnected Latinas, Latinas are the most likely of all race-gender groups to be disconnected. In Nashville, Tennessee and Charlotte, North Carolina, one in three Latinas ages 16 to 24 is disconnected.

There could be a number of reasons for the higher rates of Latina disconnectedness in these cities. The Queens College/Teachers College study found that female disconnected youth are more likely to have family responsibilities while male disconnected youth are more likely to be incarcerated. Another study reported that 30 percent of female disconnected youth have children compared with 11 percent of all 16- to 24-year-old females. And in 2014, national Black and Latina teen birth rates were more than two times higher than the rate for White teens. Importantly, poverty and low levels of education correlate with teen pregnancy, and young people in the child welfare system are also more likely to become pregnant.

Early disconnection can have profound impacts later in life, particularly when it comes to employment, health, and participation. The American Public Health Association explained in a recent video that an 18-year-old male in California was more likely to be arrested in 2014 than he was to vote. And there is even evidence suggesting that employers use gaps in work history as a proxy for criminal activity or incarceration, which disproportionately impacts the job prospects of Black men. 

Where do Latinos have higher rates of disconnection than Latinas?

The share of disconnected Latinos is larger than the share of disconnected Latinas in only 11 of the 69 cities with sufficient data on Latina disconnection. In most of those cities, the difference is just a couple percentage points, except in Henderson, Nevada, San Francisco, California, and Irvine, California—the three cities with the lowest rates of disconnection among Latinas. The difference is largest in Irvine, California, where 12 percent of Latinos are disconnected compared with just 2 percent of Latinas.

Strategies for racial and gender justice

Ensuring that all young people are healthy, educated, and connected to opportunities is essential for economic prosperity. Solutions are comprehensive and require participation across education, juvenile justice, and child welfare systems. Reforming harsh, “zero tolerance” school discipline policies that put boys and girls of color on track to jail rather than college is key to keeping young people in classrooms. And transforming classroom learning by integrating work-based and linked learning opportunities as well as culturally relevant education can help ensure that students are college and career ready at graduation.

In the quest for targeted strategies that focus resources toward historically disadvantaged populations, disaggregated data is ever more important to ensure that resources reach and benefit the most affected groups. The new gender data added to the National Equity Atlas for the Working poor, Disconnected youth, and Education levels and job requirements indicators allows communities to capture some of this variation in order to better inform local knowledge and strategies.

To learn more about how women and men of color are faring in your community, go to the Indicators tab, select one of the five equity indicators that have data by gender (Working poor, Disconnected youth, Education levels and job requirements, Wages: $15/hour, and Wages: Median), and click on the “By gender” breakdown.

Second generation immigrants show improved socioeconomic outcomes over their parents. Despite America’s many challenges in creating equitable opportunities, it is a rare bright spot in the nation’s racial and ethnic landscape. New data added to the National Equity Atlas in July shows how U.S.-born Latinos trail U.S.-born Whites in education, wages, and poverty, but still fare better than their immigrant counterparts (with one notable exception).

The recently added nativity breakdowns in the National Equity Atlas allow users to compare outcomes for immigrants and U.S.-born people. In the analysis below, we compare the outcomes of Latinos and Whites with a specific focus on those who are U.S.-born across three socioeconomic indicators: median wage, educational attainment, and poverty, and suggest some reasons why this stratification might persist. For reference, two thirds of Latinos were born in the United States, while 95 percent of Whites are U.S.-born citizens.  

The White-Latino wage gap is smaller among the U.S.-born population

The median wage for Latino workers is $7 less than the median wage for White workers. When looking only at U.S.-born workers, however, the wage gap decreases: U.S.-born Latinos only trail U.S.-born Whites by $4. This narrower wage gap can be explained, in part, by the fact that U.S.-born Latinos earn a much higher median wage ($18/hour) than their immigrant counterparts ($13/hour).

Regions with the greatest numbers of Latinos have larger wage gaps

To better understand how this wage gap varies by region and with the size of the overall Latino population, we looked at the six U.S. metro areas with the largest numbers of Latinos: Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Houston, Chicago, and Riverside, California. Taken together, these six metro areas are home to 37 percent of the total Latino population in the United States.

In nearly all of these regions, the wage disparities between U.S.-born Whites and U.S.-born Latinos are higher than the national average. The wage gap in the Los Angeles and New York metros reach as high as $10/hour—$6/hour more than the national wage gap between U.S.-born Latinos and U.S.-born Whites. Only Miami has a wage gap comparable to the national average.

Why is the wage gap between U.S.-born Latinos and U.S.-born Whites so much higher than the national average in the regions where the most Latinos live? It is mainly being driven by the particularly high wages of U.S.-born Whites in these regions. As the chart above illustrates, U.S.-born Latinos in all six regions have higher median wages than the national average of $18/hour, reaching as high as $21/hour in the New York metro area. U.S.-born Whites in all six regions also have median wages that are above the national average of $22/hour, reaching as high as $31/hour in New York. As a consequence, the median wage gap tends to be significantly above the national average in these regions, despite U.S.-born Latinos also reporting higher median wages.

Both place and educational attainment affect median wages

Metropolitan regions attract high-skilled and educated workers, and the fact that these metro areas are home not only to the largest populations of Latinos but also to some of the biggest cities in our nation could help explain the wage gaps described above. But how do U.S.-born Latinos and Whites in these regions compare in terms of educational attainment?

The figure below reveals that the share of residents with at least a bachelor’s degree (BA) in most of these regions is much higher than the national average for both U.S.-born Whites and U.S.-born Latinos. In four of the six regions, a greater share of U.S.-born Latinos has a bachelor’s degree compared to the national average of 18 percent for all U.S.-born Latinos. There is also considerable variation in educational attainment among the U.S.-born White population. Only in Riverside is the share of U.S.-born Whites with at least a BA smaller than the national average of 34 percent.

A report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia shows that workers with and without college degrees tend to earn higher wages in larger cities, but college graduates experience a much faster growth in their median wages in big cities. The big-city factor might be one reason for these above-average wages.

Comparing the data on wages and education levels for U.S.-born Latinos from the charts above reveal how Miami’s U.S.-born Latinos tend to be highly educated yet do not earn particularly high wages, while Riverside’s U.S.-born Latinos are less educated and earn particularly high wages.

The poverty rate is similar for immigrant and U.S. born Latinos

While U.S.-born Latinos do better than immigrant Latinos when it comes to median wages and educational attainment, when you look at poverty (at the 100 percent of the federal poverty level threshold), you will see a different story. As the chart below illustrates, U.S.-born Latinos and Latino immigrants experience poverty at about the same rate—24 percent—compared with 10 percent for Whites. This suggests that U.S.-born Latinos are not better off than their immigrant counterparts when it comes to poverty, and, in fact, the unrounded numbers show that their poverty rates are actually slightly higher—24.4 percent versus 24.0 percent. When looking at 200 percent of poverty, however, the trend is similar to one we saw with wages and education: U.S.-born Latinos are less likely than Latino immigrants to fall below 200% of poverty (51 percent versus 57 percent). Still, the fact that U.S.-born Latinos experience deep poverty at the same rate as their immigrant counterparts is troubling.

One potential explanation for this could be that many U.S.-born Latinos belong to recent immigrant households whose socioeconomic status often has reverberating effects for their children and the generations that follow. Another possible explanation is that immigrant-headed households tend to be larger with more workers, raising their family-based poverty threshold while U.S.-born Latinos are more likely to be in smaller, nuclear families.

Inclusion and integration for the fastest growing community in the U.S.

The U.S. Latino community, the fastest growing group in the richest country on earth, should not be steeped in this magnitude of poverty. The astounding numbers of U.S.-born Latinos and Latino immigrants living under the poverty line underscore not only how great the challenges are to Latino immigrant integration and inclusion, but more shockingly how great the challenges are to achieving equity for their U.S.-born counterparts.

One starting point to address this lack of integration in the Latino community is to insure the children and youth within this community have access to quality education that could launch them on a positive trajectory to achieve economic success.

To learn more about how U.S.-born people and immigrants are faring in your community, go to the Indicators tab, select one of the eight equity indicators that have data by nativity (Wages: $15/hour, Unemployment, Homeownership, Wages: Median, Working poor, Poverty, Disconnected youth, or Education levels and job requirements), and click on the “By nativity” breakdown.

This blog post by Angel Ross was first published on the National Equity Atlas August 9, 2016.

Immigrants have been an integral part of the social, political, and economic fabric of this nation since its inception. But increasingly hostile local, state, and national policies and climates put many immigrants in precarious situations, restricting both their participation and potential, and ultimately hurting the economy as a whole.

In June, we released data on working poverty in the Atlas, and found the number of Latinos working full-time yet still struggling economically has increased steadily over the last three decades. Last week, we added breakdowns on immigrant status to eight Atlas indicators, including working poverty. This new data reveals the significant challenges of working poverty among Latino immigrants and the vast differences within the Latino immigrant and U.S.-born populations. For instance, nationwide Latino immigrants are twice as likely as U.S.-born Latinos to be working poor.

This analysis describes working poverty among Latino immigrants, examines the cities with the worst outcomes on this indicator, and highlights policies to support immigrant integration and ensure economic security.

Employed Latino immigrants have higher poverty rates than U.S.-born Latinos

One in four Latino immigrants between the ages of 25 and 64 is working full-time but has a family income below 200% of the federal poverty level, compared with just 12 percent of U.S.-born Latinos. Mexican immigrants, who account for more than half of all Latino immigrants, have the highest overall rate of working poverty among Latinos at nearly 29 percent followed by Guatemalans (28 percent) and Hondurans (26 percent). 

Multiple factors contribute to these numbers. In addition to lower wages and lower levels of educational attainment on average, another important reason is that immigrants, half of whom are Latino, are less likely to be enrolled in public benefits programs. Poverty is calculated based on family income, which includes earnings as well as sources other than work like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Undocumented people are currently ineligible for many of these programs, but we see lower rates of enrollment even among eligible immigrant families. Increasing enrollment in these programs is one way to ease the burden that many low-income immigrant families face in the U.S.

Many immigrants are also part of mixed status families, which might include authorized immigrants, undocumented immigrants, and U.S. citizens. By 2010, close to a quarter of all children had at least one immigrant parent. But due to the precarious status of undocumented workers and discrimination against Latino immigrants, exploitation and wage theft is rampant.

The high rates of working poverty among working-age Latino immigrants translates into high levels of economic insecurity among Latino children, who are a large and growing segment of our future workforce. Nearly 63 percent of Latinos under 18 years old live below 200 percent of poverty as do two in three Latino children under 5 years old.

Where do Latino immigrants face the biggest barriers?

To better understand the geography of economic insecurity among Latino immigrants, we ranked the 100 largest cities in the U.S. by the rate of working poverty and the median wage among Latino immigrants. Because both citizenship and education are associated with higher earnings, we also looked at the citizenship rate and the percent without a high school diploma.

The cities with the highest levels of working poverty among Latino immigrants—with 38 to 40 percent of their Latino immigrants working poor—included the North Carolina cities of Winston-Salem and Greensboro, along with the Texas cities of Dallas and Irving, followed by Minneapolis, Minnesota. These cities also had lower median wages, lower levels of citizenship, and lower levels of educational attainment than Latino immigrants nationally. The national citizenship rate of all Latino immigrants, for example, is 30 percent and the median wage for full-time workers is $12.70/hour. Yet the citizenship rate among the five cities with the highest levels of working poverty ranged from 11 percent in Winston-Salem and Greensboro to 19 percent in Irving. The median wage ranged from $9.40/hour in Winston-Salem to $10.70/hour in Dallas. Similarly, just under half of Latino immigrants nationally lack a high school diploma, but that number goes as high as 68 percent in Dallas.

The cities with the lowest median wages among Latino immigrants—ranging from just $8.90/hour to $10.20/hour—are Raleigh and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Indianapolis, IN, Plano, TX, and Columbus, OH. Indianapolis has the third lowest median wage but a significantly lower rate of working poverty than other cities. The wage difference in Irving and Plano, Texas show the extent to which labor markets are truly local: the median wage is more than a dollar lower in Plano than in Irving or Dallas even though both are part of the Dallas metropolitan area and educational attainment is higher in Plano. Importantly, Latino immigrants as a whole account for a much smaller share of the total population in Plano than in Irving (7 percent in Plano versus 20 percent in Irving).

Winston-Salem, NC is the only city ranking both in the top five on working poverty and in the bottom five on median wages. With roughly 36,000 Latinos, 20,000 of whom are immigrants, Winston-Salem is home to the largest share of Latinos out of all big cities in North Carolina while neighboring Greensboro has one of the smallest shares of Latinos. Yet in both cities, Latino immigrants face significant barriers to economic inclusion. Four in ten Latino immigrants ages 25 to 64 in Winston-Salem and Greensboro are working poor and half earn less than $9.50/hour in Winston-Salem and $10/hour in Greensboro.

Latino immigrants in the capital of North Carolina at the heart of the Research Triangle (anchored by North Carolina State University, Duke University, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) have the lowest median wage for full-time workers of the largest 100 cities and even the largest 150 metropolitan areas in the country. With more than half of Latino immigrants in Raleigh earning less than $9/hour, combining the income of two working parents still doesn’t add up to a living wage for a family of three or four. Latino immigrants are more than three times as likely as U.S.-born Latinos in Raleigh to be working poor.

Interestingly, the median wage of Latino immigrants in Durham, also in the Research Triangle, is nearly $3/hour higher than in Raleigh even though a higher percentage of Latino immigrants in Durham lack a HS diploma and the citizenship rates in both cities are nearly identical. The Latino population also accounts for roughly the same share of the population in both cities, but Durham is majority people of color and Raleigh is majority White. Despite the higher median wage, 29 percent of Latino immigrants in Durham are working poor.

Municipal IDs and the state preemption of local policies benefiting immigrants

The North Carolina economy relies on immigrant labor, but last year Governor Pat McCrory signed a bill banning local governments from establishing “sanctuary cities” and preventing government agencies from accepting local or foreign-issued IDs. The mayor of Greensboro viewed this legislation as targeted towards their local efforts to welcome immigrants with one of the first programs in the South that offered ID cards to immigrants. Law enforcement officials successfully pushed back last year and the law only bars city officials from accepting the ID cards, not police or hospitals.

But this year, new legislation was introduced in the state that would prohibit law enforcement from accepting municipal IDs. This law was passed in spite of evidence that local ID cards help to foster a sense of community among all residents and that law enforcement has actually solved more cases due to increased trust from the undocumented community. This type of state preemption to local authority is a threat to equitable development, but continues to gain momentum across the country, particularly in more conservative states, curbing the ability of local leaders to build inclusive and equitable cities.

Immigrant integration is a moral and economic imperative

In an increasingly hostile political environment, one promising strategy for immigrant integration is increasing naturalization. Not only does naturalization strengthen democracy through voter representation, it also results in economic gains. A recent study by our partners at the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration found that reducing the eligible to naturalize population by half over 5 years is estimated to result in a $75 billion gain to the national economy over ten years. Ending the criminalization of undocumented immigrants by providing a pathway to citizenship and increasing citizenship supports for authorized immigrants has benefits extending far beyond the immigrant population.

In additional to municipal ID cards, other state and local strategies include providing access to health care for undocumented people, as SB 10 did in California, and separating local policing from immigration enforcement as HB 13-1258 did in Colorado. Policies that contribute to the just and fair inclusion of those residents who are often left behind help to create thriving and sustainable communities. To learn more about these policies, visit our immigrant contribution to growth indicator.

To explore data on immigrants for your city, region or state, visit the National Equity Atlas. For more information on the nativity cuts, see our previous blog.

Dear Equity Atlas Users,

As Latinos drive population growth and change in America, their ability to thrive is increasingly critical to the health of our economies locally and nationally. Yet, new data on working poverty in the National Equity Atlas reveals the extent to which many Latinos are working full-time yet still struggling economically. In 2012, nearly one in three Latino full-time workers, ages 25 to 64, earned below 200 percent of poverty – up from 27 percent in 1990 and compared with 9 percent for their White counterparts.

This post takes a closer look at Latino working poverty across the nation’s largest 150 metropolitan regions. Working poverty describes full-time workers with a family income below 200 percent of poverty, and the rates of working poverty in this post reflect the working poor as a share of full-time workers ages 25 through 64. While poverty is defined at the family level, based on combined income from all family members, in this post we make reference to individual earnings for simplicity. Given that an individual’s family income must be as high or higher than their personal earnings, the rates of working poverty reported here understate the rates that would be found if only an individual’s earnings were considered.

Latino Working Poverty High and Increasing in Many Regions

Not only do many regions have high rates of Latino working poor, conditions are getting worse over time. This is shown by the scatter plot below, which plots the largest 150 regions by the share of Latino full-time workers who earn below 200 percent of poverty in 2012 and the percent increase in Latino working poverty between 2000 and 2012. The farther to the right, the greater the share of Latino working poverty in 2012. The higher up on the chart, the greater the percent increase in Latino working poverty between 2000 and 2012. As illustrated by the number of metros in the upper-right quadrant, there appears to be a positive relationship: the regions with higher rates of working poverty among Latinos also saw a sharp growth in Latino working poverty.

Regions in Tennessee and North Carolina have the highest rates of Latino working poverty

Mapping the data reveals additional geographic patterns, including the clustering of Latino working poverty in the South and particularly in the states of Tennessee and North Carolina. Of the largest 150 metro regions in the U.S., all nine in North Carolina saw substantial increases in working poverty among Latino full-time workers, ranging from a 23 percent increase in Greensboro to an 82 percent increase in Winston-Salem. Each region also had a Latino working poverty rate greater than the national average except for Fayetteville, which matched it. More than half of Latino full-time workers in Greensboro, Durham, Hickory, and Winston-Salem earned less than 200 percent of poverty.

Similarly, the four regions in Tennessee included in the Atlas saw higher than average increases in the overall rates of Latino working poverty. One in two Latino full-time workers in Chattanooga earned less than 200 percent of poverty in 2012, up from 28 percent in 2000. Over the same time period, the Latino population grew significantly faster than any other group in the region.

Tennessee and North Carolina are among the roughly 15 states that currently ban local governments from adopting their own minimum wage laws. Part of the controversial HB2 law passed earlier this year in North Carolina, which restricts usage of multiple occupancy bathrooms for transgender and gender non-conforming people, also includes state preemptions to local minimum wage increases. The current minimum wage in Tennessee and North Carolina is the same as the federal: $7.25 an hour. The MIT Living Wage Calculator, however, estimates that a living wage for a family of four ranges from $13 to $22 an hour in Tennessee and from $14 to $23 an hour in North Carolina. The state preemption laws also prevent localities from allowing workers to earn paid sick leave.

This is a growing and alarming trend: eight states have considered restrictions on local minimum wage increases this year and the story is often similar. When states fail to pass increases in minimum wages in step with increases in cost of living and inflation, some jurisdictions take matters into their own hands by increasing local minimum wages. State legislatures—especially those led by Republicans—push back by adopting laws preventing local action. Raising wages would be especially beneficial to workers of color. In North Carolina, for example, 11 percent of White full-time workers earn less than 200 percent of poverty compared with nearly half of Latino full-time workers. Even more striking, 12 percent of Latino full-time workers earn less than 100 percent of poverty.

Addressing working poverty is a moral and economic imperative. If Latinos, the fastest growing group in many regions, are unable to participate, prosper, and reach their full potential, the impacts will go far beyond the Latino population. To learn more about working poverty in your city, region, or state, and learn about policies that lift the wages of workers, explore the new working poor indicator.

Wage stagnation and the increasing number of people who are working yet still poor are significant challenges of our era. One recent study found that there isn’t a single congressional district in the country where a full-time minimum wage worker could afford a two-bedroom apartment. With the rapid growth of unstable, low-paying jobs and the failure of even full-time work to pay family-supporting wages, it is critical to understand working poverty in order to enact policies that lift working families out of poverty.

This analysis describes trends in the persistence of working poverty in America drawing from new data added to the National Equity Atlas. Most measures of the “working poor” count everyone who spent at least the last 6 months in the labor force—including those employed part-time, seasonally, and even the unemployed. We use a more restrictive measure in our analysis counting only full-time workers between the ages of 25 and 64 who fall below 200 percent of poverty. Users can explore rates of working poor at 100 percent, 150 percent, and 200 percent of poverty, but for this analysis, “working poor” is defined as full-time workers below 200 percent of poverty.

Why focus on 200 percent of the poverty line?

We believe that looking at the population below 200 percent of poverty provides a more accurate picture of economic insecurity in the United States. Some argue that the poverty level is too low, particularly in more expensive metro areas. Others point out that that experience of poverty is more porous than a poverty line, which fails to capture the millions of families who move in and out of poverty each year or those families at risk of falling into poverty if they lose a job or have a medical emergency. A family of four below 200 percent of poverty in 2012 had a family income less than $46,000 a year. There are currently over 100 million people living below this threshold in the U.S.—one in three people.

The 12 Million Working Poor

While a large number of that 100 million living at or below 200 percent of the poverty line are children and seniors, over 12 million of them are full-time workers between the ages of 25 and 64. Of these full-time workers earning less than 200 percent of poverty, the majority -- 56 percent -- are workers of color. Working poverty has increased dramatically over the last three decades, growing from less than 7 million in 1980 to today’s 12.4 million. Of all full-time workers ages 25 to 64, the share who were working poor declined slightly between 1980 and 2000 before increasing by 19 percent in 2012. In the 1980s and 1990s, the working poor rate hovered around 12 percent, but by 2012, was close to 14 percent.

Latino workers face the highest and fastest-growing levels of working poverty

Breaking down the overall data by race reveals that Latinos are the only major racial/ethnic group to experience continual increases in working poverty over the last three decades. In fact, increases in the overall rate of working poverty are driven largely by increases among the Latino population. In 1980, about a quarter of Black and Latino prime-age full-time workers were working poor, more than twice the rates of Whites. But over the next two decades, as the rates declined among Black workers, it increased for Latinos. Even more alarming, Latino full-time workers are 4.5 times more likely than White full-time workers to earn below the federal poverty line and nearly one in three Latino full-time workers fall below 200 percent of poverty.

The nation’s demographic changes magnify the importance of these trends. Latinos and APIs are among the fastest growing groups in the U.S. and they not only saw the largest increases in working poverty over the last decade but they were also the only groups to experience increases since 1980. By 2012, Latinos were more than three times as likely as Whites to be working poor.

What this means for the future

The promise of work is part of the American Dream. Most Americans believe that people who work, especially those working full-time year round, should be earning enough to provide for their families. But nearly one in three Latino full-time workers between the ages of 25 and 64 still bring home a family income below 200 percent of poverty (and that includes the income of all other family members as well as income from sources other than work). And the experience of working poverty for most racial/ethnic groups in the U.S., including Whites, has increased since 2000, signifying a disturbing trend in the labor force and a need for policy that ensures all work pays a fair wage.

These increases in working poverty are explained, in part, by changes in economic structure and policy. Over the last several decades, businesses have generated a disproportionate amount of low-wage jobs and wages have been flat for all but the highest earners (see the Job and wage growth indicator). To make matters worse, growing unemployment during the Great Recession pushed down on wages even further. Lifting the wages of workers requires a robust policy agenda like the one proposed by the Economic Policy Institute that tilts power back into the hands of workers. To learn more about policies that lift full-time workers out of poverty like the Earned Income Tax Credit and minimum wage increases and to explore the new working poor indicator, click here.

Over the past several weeks, we've been analyzing our new ancestry data and also just added two new indicators on poverty and working poverty.
 
Analyzing Ancestry Data 

We recently completed a series of analyses of last month’s racial subgroup data update. Our analysis of homeownership among the Asian and Pacific Islander (API) population found that rates of homeownership range from 25 percent for Samoans up to 68 percent for Taiwanese. Looking at educational attainment and youth disconnectedness among the API population we saw that Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander groups fare much worse than their South and East Asian counterparts. Examining wage disparities within the Latino population, we found that Central Americans tend to earn the least. And our review of unemployment in the Black population shows how certain Sub-Saharan Africans, many of whom are immigrants, have unemployment rates more comparable to the national average. Check out the Data in Action section of the Atlas website to stay up to date on analyses released throughout the month.

New Poverty and Working Poor Indicators

High rates of poverty impact everyone, costing our economy billions of dollars annually and weakening the middle class and democracy. And as the low-wage sector has grown, the share of adults who are working full-time jobs but still cannot make ends meet has increased, particularly among Latinos and other workers of color. The Atlas now includes indicators for the percentage of individuals living below three poverty thresholds (100, 150, and 200 percent of the federal poverty line) and by age so you can understand child poverty, as well as the percentage of full-time workers living below each of the three thresholds
 
Webinars

Join the National Equity Atlas team for a live demo of our new Poverty and Working Poor equity indicators on July 12, 12:00 – 12:30 pm PT / 3:00 – 3:30 pm ET. During this 30-minute webinar, we will walk you through these indicators and policy strategies to advance racial economic inclusion and equitable growth in your community. Register here. Video from the June 22 live demonstration of the Atlas, sponsored by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, can be viewed here. 

National Equity Atlas in Measure Up

The Build Healthy Places Network — which connects leaders and practitioners across the health and community development sectors—has just added the National Equity Atlas to its microsite of resources and tools, MeasureUp. You can find the National Equity Atlas on their Mapping Tools page.
 
Thank you!
The Equity Atlas team at PolicyLink and the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE)