Having a Job Ain’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be
Workers aren’t getting raises, while food and fuel prices crimp budgets
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Tamra Loomis, a graphic designer and single mother of two boys, grows vegetables to trim grocery bills. She uses coupons when she shops. She doesn’t have a monthly Internet charge: She goes to her parents’ house and uses their broadband connection.
Loomis makes $17 an hour working at a sign company in Antioch, Calif., and hasn’t had a raise in three years. The owner has twice denied Loomis’s request for higher wages, she says, and in January he cut the hours for her and the company’s other employee to 30 a week from 40. “At this point, I’m paycheck to paycheck,” says Loomis, 32. “A lot of people aren’t hiring, and when they are, they offer even less than what I make.”