First, many of those being encouraged, pressured, and coerced to move from welfare to work end up with neither. Then there are those who do find some sort of job and find their circumstances no better, or even worse, than on welfare. And for people of color, of course, the labor market remains discriminatory, as it has always been. Most of those leaving TANF have found their way into the gender ghettoes of service, sales, and clerical work where they are earning barely above minimum wage. So-called welfare reformers pretended that pushing people into the labor market was somehow connected to getting them out of poverty, but actually, it wasn't.
Most poor people work for pay their whole lives.
In fact, the likelihood of remaining in poverty while engaging in paid work is increasing all the time. Among people of color, the percentage of workers in poverty goes higher still. Studies of what happens to women forced off welfare into the low-wage job market are just beginning to come out. Not surprisingly, they show that most of those leaving TANF have found their way into the gender ghettoes of service, sales, and clerical work where, even in northern industrial states, they are earning barely above minimum wage. Fewer than one-fourth were in jobs that provided health insurance.