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EMPLOYMENT
Status Report
More than 250,000 residents of Los Angeles are currently unemployed.
Although the Los Angeles unemployment rate has dropped steadily
from 9.8% in 1992 to 6.8% in 2004, the number of working poor
increased by 34% while overall employment increased by less than
5% in the 1990’s. In addition to those unemployed, an estimated
3.75 million people in working families are sufficiently poor
as to not be able to meet the true cost of living in LA County
and, of these, 1.25 million live beneath the federal poverty level,
which is only $18,103 for a family of four.
Los Angles is the mecca of low wage employers in the United States.
Largely due to an immigrant population, sweatshops and low-wage
manufacturing, construction and services abound. People are desperate
and it is easy to take advantage of them with illegal wage levels.
Sixty percent of these working families have no health coverage.
One out of every two of these families will have to supplement
their food supplies from giveaway sources in the course of the
year, many of them regularly…1.3 million are classified as
"food insecure" by the County Dept. of Health.
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