What percentage of Americans earn less than living wage?
Mia Phillips
Updated on February 10, 2026
A recent study has found that, despite the total number of jobs increasing apace, many of them don’t pay well, as 44 percent of Americans 18-64 are low-wage workers, according to Bloomberg.
What percentage of American workers earn less than $15 an hour?
By that measure, the typical (median) American worker earned about $20.20 an hour in 2019. The 39 million workers earning less than $15 in 2019 represented about 28 percent of the workforce.
What percentage of Americans make less than $30000?
Income distribution
| Income range | Number of people | Cumulative percentages |
|---|---|---|
| $30,000 to $32,499 | 10,399,000 | less than $100k 90.85% |
| $32,500 to $34,999 | 4,429,000 | |
| $35,000 to $37,499 | 7,975,000 | |
| $37,500 to $39,999 | 3,930,000 |
How many Americans are low-wage workers?
About 865,000 workers had wages below the federal minimum. Together, these 1.1 million workers with wages at or below the federal minimum made up 1.5 percent of all hourly paid workers. Data on minimum wage workers for 2020 reflect the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on the labor market.
What percentage of Americans make 30000 annually?
About 86 million people make up 50 percent of U.S. workers. The SSA’s annual wage report showed roughly 10.3 million workers’ net compensation was between $30,000 and $35,000 in 2019. Individuals who fell within that compensation bracket earned $32,452 on average, according to SSA statistics.
How many Americans make $15 an hour?
Almost half of U.S. workers (42.4 percent) make less than $15 per hour. Workers within certain demographic groups are more likely to be working in this low-wage category than are workers in other groups.
What’s the percentage of US workers that make less than$ 30, 000?
This chart from personal finance site HowMuch helps give us a clear and sobering picture of how wages are distributed in the US. According to the graph, which uses 2018 wage data from the Social Security Administration, 46.51% of US workers earned less than $30,000.
How many people work in low wage jobs?
Almost half of U.S. workers between ages 18 to 64 are employed in low-wage jobs, the Brookings Institution found. Low-wage jobs are pervasive, representing between one-third to two-thirds of all jobs in the country’s almost 400 metropolitan areas.
How many people have good jobs in United States?
But only about 30 million Americans have good jobs by that definition — and most of those are held by workers with college degrees, it found. The reality is that Americans are working but aren’t earning enough to gain stable economic footings.
How many older people are working in the United States?
9 More older Americans are working than in previous decades. In July of this year, 19.8% of U.S. adults ages 65 and older – nearly 10.5 million people – reported being employed full- or part-time, continuing a steady increase since at least 2000. Older workers represented 6.6% of all employed Americans in July, up from 3% in July 2000.
