Working poor
The working poor are working people whose incomes fall below a given poverty line due to low-income jobs and low familial household income. These are people who spend at least 27 weeks in a year working or looking for employment, but remain under the poverty threshold. In the US, the official measurement of the working poor is controversial. Many social scientists argue that the official measurements used do not provide a comprehensive overview of the number of working poor. One recent study proposed over 100 ways to measure this and came up with a figure that ranged between 2% and 19% of the total US population. There is also controversy surrounding ways that the working poor can be helped. Arguments range from increasing welfare to the poor on one end of the spectrum to encouraging the poor to achieve greater self-sufficiency on the other end, with most arguing varying degrees of both. According to the US Department of Labor, the working poor "are persons who spent at least 27 weeks [in the past year] in the labor force (that is, working or looking for work), but whose incomes fell below the official poverty level." In other words, if someone spent more than half of the past year in the labor force without earning more than the official poverty threshold, the US Department of Labor would classify them as "working poor". (Note: The official poverty threshold, which is set by the US Census Bureau, varies depending on the size of a family and the age of the family members.) , the poverty threshold for a family of four people is 13,788. The official poverty threshold is calculated by using the Consumer Price Index for goods, multiplying the cost of a minimum food diet in 1963 by three, a family's gross income (before tax), and the number of family members. In 2017, there were 6.9 million individuals defined as working poor. Because there has been, and still is, debate on how accurate using this metric is, the US Census Bureau began publishing a Supplemental Poverty Measure in 2011.
