Occupations and poverty

Monthly Labor Review, Nov, 2004

The chance of being among the working poor varies widely by occupation. Workers in occupations requiring higher education and characterized by high earnings, such as managers and professionals, were least likely to be classified as working poor in 2002. Only 2 percent of workers in these occupations who had been in the labor force more than half the year were among the working poor.

On the other hand, persons employed in jobs that usually do not require high levels of education and that are characterized by low earnings were more likely to be among the working poor. For example, 10.3 percent of service workers were classified as working poor in 2002. Service occupations, with 2.2 million working poor, accounted for 29.3 percent of all those classified as the working poor. These data are from the 2003 Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey. For more information, see A Profile of the Working Poor, 2002, BLS Report 976.