Without Quick Action From Congress Millions Of Workers’ Physical And Financial Health Is At Grave Risk

The evolving coronavirus pandemic is shining a light on massive disparities in the U.S. labor market. It is not enough to have a job. People also need good jobs to be financially secure, especially when facing the challenges associated with the spread of a virus. Decent pay, good benefits and stable incomes are all marks of a good job. Yet many of those workers, who often come directly into contact with others in their jobs and are thus particularly vulnerable to contracting the virus have finances like a Jenga tower. One event like a viral infection can make their finances crumble in an instant.

Millions of people work with low pay in jobs where they regularly interact with others. Communicable diseases such as the coronavirus can easily spread in those work establishments. According to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 40.0 million people worked in hospitals, nursing homes, child care facilities, home health care services and retail in January 2020. Another 9.3 million worked in schools in December 2019, the last month for which data are available.

Many of these workers earn little money. This makes it difficult to save for an emergency. The average hourly pay for production, non-supervisory workers in nursing homes, for example, was $18.46 in December 2019. The hourly pay was $19.42 in home health care services, $14.52 in child care, $14.20 for people working in restaurants and hotels and $16.90 for retail in the same month. In comparison, average hourly earnings for all private sector workers was $23.84, or at least 22.8% higher than average hourly earnings of low-wage workers regularly exposed to a lot of people. For other sectors, data aren’t readily available, but many aides working in hospitals and support staff in schools also tend to earn little money. A lot of workers, who regularly interact with many people, including the sick and elderly, and who are especially susceptible to contracting a communicable disease, are caught between low pay and high health worries right now.

For many of these workers the situation is even worse. They often lack paid sick leave, so that they face the stark choice of going to work with the risk of getting exposed to coronavirus or  losing their income. Only 58% of workers in service occupations and 64% of people in sales jobs had paid sick leave in 2018. The lack of good employer benefits exposes vulnerable workers’ finances when a health crisis emerges .  

Things will get even worse when workers in these jobs actually become sick. Many have no health insurance or only inadequate health insurance. By my calculations based on data from the Federal Reserve, 23.4% of workers in restaurants, personal care, health aides and retail sales lacked health insurance in 2018. While workers in these occupations were as likely as others to experience an unexpected health expense in 2018, they were much more likely to end up with medical debt because of it. More than half of workers in these lower-wage occupations – 52.7% — had medical debt related to unexpected health expenses in 2018, compared to only 38.5% of other workers. Getting sick could quickly create a massive financial burden for many workers, especially in jobs where they are more likely to be exposed to the virus.

People’s personal finances could come crashing down even harder than that. Because workers in lower-wage jobs that are more likely to be exposed to a communicable disease have worked at low wages and with poor benefits for some time, they often have saved little for an emergency. Only 42.9% of workers in these jobs could access $400 in an emergency in 2018, compared to 65.0% in other jobs. And among workers in jobs more likely exposed to communicable diseases who had no health insurance in 2018, the respective share was even lower with only 34.9%. Getting sick with the coronavirus could make a bad financial situation worse, particularly for people who are at a heightened risk of being exposed to the virus.

The Federal Reserve data from 2018 confirms this again. One-in-four workers in lower-wage occupations that regularly interact with a lot of people could not pay all of their bills then. In comparison, only one-in-seven other workers struggled to pay all of their bills that year.

Congress and the administration can quickly take steps to address the financial pain for families from any health crisis and not just from the coronavirus. This would include paid sick leave, ensuring that workers can go to the doctor and get tested when they show symptoms, taking care of their finances when they need medication and medical attention and providing unemployment insurance if they are out of a job because of the spreading disease. Many of the most vulnerable workers need help for both their physical and financial health in this growing crisis.