The U.S. is failing workers and is drastically behind other high-income countries in mandating adequate wages, protections, and rights for millions of workers and their families, according to a new report by Oxfam America.
The report, “Where Hard Work Doesn’t Pay Off,” explores a robust new index that compares U.S. labor laws to those of economic peer nations by tracking 56 different policies across 38 nations in three key dimensions: wage policies, worker protections, and rights to organize. The U.S. consistently ranks near the bottom: #36 in wage policies, #38 in worker protections, and #32 in rights to organize. These rankings reflect the fact that most other peer nations mandate rights and protections for all workers, while the U.S. regards them as privileges for people in “good” jobs.
“The U.S. may be the richest country in the world, but we are falling drastically behind our economic peer nations,” said Dr. Kaitlyn Henderson, senior research advisor with Oxfam America’s U.S. Domestic Policy Program. “Despite having the largest economy, the U.S. does little to invest in its workers, much less provide a social safety net for working families. The U.S. is the only economically advanced nation to deny its workforce the fundamental right of paid leave, to say nothing of this country’s stagnating wages and the continued effort to deny workers’ rights to organize. These policy choices are failing our workers and exacerbating extreme inequality, especially harming people of color, women, immigrants and refugees.”
The index puts a strong emphasis on policies that champion care work, both in terms of improved wages for paid care workers and support for individuals who hold care responsibilities – demographics largely dominated by women. Here, the U.S. ranks dead last as the only country on the list without a single day of mandated paid sick leave or paid parenting leave for its workers. In every other country in the index, paid leave is mandated for everyone, going up to 43 weeks of paid maternity leave in Greece.
Many of the countries in the index also mandate affordable child care. In the Netherlands, for example, the cost of child care as a percentage of the average household income for a one-parent household is less than 8 percent. In the U.S., that number is more than 34 percent, making child care essentially unaffordable for all but the wealthiest households.
Oxfam’s evaluation of U.S. wage policies proved similarly bleak. While the U.S. does have a federal minimum wage, it has not been raised in 14 years and only covers 29 percent of the national average wage. Compare this, for example, to Belgium, where the federal minimum wage covers 75 percent of the national average. Worse still, U.S. minimum wage law also excludes groups like agricultural workers, young workers, and workers with disabilities. The composition of this underpaid workforce is especially stark, with women of color disproportionately holding low-wage jobs.
“You can clearly see the echoes of historical racial and gender discrimination in today’s labor laws,” continued Henderson. “The exclusion of agricultural workers, domestic workers, and tipped workers from basic labor protections in the 1930s was an intentional policy to exploit the occupational segregation that resulted from our country’s long legacy of slavery and prejudiced immigration policies. Today, nearly 70 percent of tipped workers are women, and the agricultural and domestic sectors are industries with a majority workers of color. This perpetuates wage and wealth inequality in the U.S. along explicitly racist and sexist lines.”
Even in its strongest category, rights to organize, the U.S. still performs significantly worse than most of its peers. Unionization safeguards are consistently attacked by some branches of government and private corporations, and union membership remains strikingly low despite growing popular support for unions. The number of unionized workers in the U.S. overall dropped to historic lows of 10 percent in 2022, and only 12 percent of the workforce is covered by collective bargaining. By contrast, in Denmark, 67 percent of the workforce was unionized as of 2019.
Oxfam calls on policymakers and advocates to use this index as a tool to help identify where legislation can be improved in support of workers and working families.
“Our index seeks to imagine a more inclusive and equitable labor landscape that offers basic protections like fair wages, paid leave, affordable and accessible child care, and sectoral bargaining, to name a few,” said Henderson. “It’s time for the U.S. to catch up with its peers and start valuing the workers who drive its economy.”
/ENDS
Notes to editors:
Download “Where Hard Work Doesn’t Pay Off: An Index of US Labor Policies Compared to Peer Nations” and the methodology note here.