More report making at least $15-an-hour, a survey released Tuesday finds.
(Bloomberg) — More domestic workers in the US are making at least $15 an hour, but the share who say they can’t make housing payments or afford food has held steady, a survey released Tuesday finds.
A new report from NDWA Labs, the research wing of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, found that on average, 38% of nannies, home-care workers, and housecleaners are bringing in at least $15 an hour for their work, up from 30% earlier in the year.
Still, as record inflation menaces the country, over 40% of respondents said they couldn’t make their rent or mortgage payments and 78% said they couldn’t or didn’t know if they would be able to pay for food in the next two weeks — figures that held steady from previous surveys. The advocacy group gathered about 14,000 surveys from Spanish-speaking members between April and August.
“Even with slight improvements in wages, domestic workers we surveyed are facing real and nearly unchanging challenges to put food on the table and keep roofs over their heads,” Paulina Lopez Gonzalez, the economist in residence at NDWA Labs, said.
Before the pandemic, NDWA estimates that as many as 45% of domestic workers were earning at least $15-an-hour. While the federal minimum wage hasn’t budged from $7.25 an hour in over a decade, many cities and counties have lifted their floors. Women and people of color are more likely to earn less than $15-per-hour, which even with a 40-hour-work week isn’t enough to afford a two bedroom apartment in most US states.
Many domestic workers aren’t working anywhere close to full-time. Nineteen percent of respondents to the NDWA survey said they didn’t work at all the previous week, and 68% of those who did said they wanted to work more.
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