I believe he means that if you were to randomly pick people from the working population (excluding children, disabled, unemployed, etc.), there is a 50% (or higher) chance that person makes minimum wage.
Extreme inequality combined with familial support. It's not uncommon now to have one or more kids living with the parents into their 20s while they go to college and build up their career, right as the homemaker enters the workforce with limited professional experience so you get 2+ minimum wage earners and one established professional bringing in support. Throw in the gig economy, which hoists capital and operational risk onto the employees (sorry, "contractors"), and you've got a majority of the working population making minimum wage.
It's even worse in university towns, where the college kids are almost guaranteed to be working for minimum wage while receiving external funding from loans or parents which can skew the numbers even more.
That's what I mean! On average this number is less than 3%. If it's managing to be 50% here, what is going on here to make the local economy so staggeringly poor? What does a place this devastated have to offer if the housing is not even cheap?
It is semi remote...but still has the "city stuff". Very beautiful area, year round recreation assuming you enjoy winter sports.
But it is a right to work state. I suspect that is part of the issue. There is very much a "Good ol' boys club" in town which has a tendency to employ people due to favors or connections (regardless of qualifications).
Even in the 90s when we had Agilent, Itron, and several other large companies in Spokane the area directly across state line was significantly cheaper to operate in. So we ended up with a few electronics contract manufacturers who got their start being basically sweatshops (yes...solderers get started out at minimum wage or barely above it).
I know a person who in the 90s was making $50/hr as an EE...last I heard he was making $25/hr to do the same job now. (When Agilent shut down it flooded the local market with engineers and techs).
Extreme inequality combined with familial support. It's not uncommon now to have one or more kids living with the parents into their 20s while they go to college and build up their career, right as the homemaker enters the workforce with limited professional experience so you get 2+ minimum wage earners and one established professional bringing in support. Throw in the gig economy, which hoists capital and operational risk onto the employees (sorry, "contractors"), and you've got a majority of the working population making minimum wage.
It's even worse in university towns, where the college kids are almost guaranteed to be working for minimum wage while receiving external funding from loans or parents which can skew the numbers even more.