In the argot of politicians, a “job” is a commodity, like a pork belly, or a widget. “We created eleventy-umpteen new jobs on my watch,” says the incumbent to raucous applause — as though they came freshly-stamped out from the line at the Acme Jobs Plant.
But what is a job, really? What does it mean to have one, or to not have one? These questions are less straightforward than we are encouraged to think. A job, you might say, is what one does to make a living — to pay the rent and the taxes, put food on the table, and (maybe, if you’re lucky) save for the kids’ college educations.
If that suffices as a working definition of “a job,” then we must recognize that it doesn’t jibe with statistics regarding employment. One of today’s biggest employers, for example, is WalMart — and we read that the wages of a large portion of Walmart’s employees are low enough to qualify them for food stamps and other forms of public assistance. According to a 2012 survey by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, no US worker, working 40 hours a week at minimum wage, can afford a two-bedroom apartment at fair market rent. And that is for a single person! For families, the poverty level is well above what basic workers can expect to earn at the “jobs” available to them.
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