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Justin Annas

LBST 2215

Prof. Arnold

1/29/14

Journal Entry 4

The research article that I chose to read and annotate was titled A Brief Look at Poverty

in America and it was published in The Journal of Housing and Community Development. This

short article discussed the topic of conflicting reports that have been in the news regarding the

decline of unemployment numbers but the rise in poverty. At the beginning of the article the are

many statistics given that show how the unemployment rate is falling and how more and more

people are finding jobs. This article was published in the March/April 2013 edition of its

Journal, and at that time the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the nation had created

almost 6 million new jobs since February 2010 also it was reported that in November 2012

unemployment had fallen to 7.7%, a four-year low. Both of these statistics seem to show that the

United States is steadily climbing out of the recession and that the quality of life here should be

steadily increasing along with the job numbers. As a person who watches the news fairly

regularly these stats were pretty familiar to me. It seems as though every night there is new

evidence that the country economy is doing much better and that we are digging our way out of

the recession, but another thing that I have often seen on the news is how the rate of poverty in

our country is still on the rise. This article also reported that in 2011 almost one-third of families

did not make enough money to make ends meet. The idea that we could have more people in

jobs now than last year, but at the same time have more people living below the poverty line than

last year has always confused me however later in the article it becomes clear how this is

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possible. According to the Working Poor Families Project from 2007-2011, the number of low

income working families rose from 28% to 32% nationwide. In an August 2012 report by the

National Employment Law Project showed that low-wage jobs have made up the majority of job

growth since the recession. When people are losing mid-wage and higher-wage jobs the odds are

that they will not be able to find another job where they will make as much money as they used

to. This leads those who are unemployed to seek employment anywhere, including part-

time/temporary minimum to low-wage jobs. There has been a large debate in the country

recently in regard to minimum wage and whether or not it truly is enough money to live off of,

and I believe that the statistics provided in this article show that one cannot provide for

themselves, let alone a family, with only a minimum wage job.