Since the recession officially ended in 2009, Americans have watched the economy slowly improve: More people are back to work, unemployment has decreased 4.9 percentage points from its height, and economic growth is slowly increasing, up 2.4 percent in 2014.  But there are those who haven’t seemed to benefit much from these gains.  A recent report from the National Employment Labor Project (NELP) found that for workers in the lowest-paying jobs things have actually gotten worse. 

According to NELP’s report, the real unemployment rate—which would also count those who are working part-time who would rather be working full time—remains above 10 percent though the national average is currently listed as almost half that, at 5.1 percent.  It’s also worth noting that improvement in unemployment has been vastly uneven, and problems of long-term unemployment, discouraged workers, and low labor-force participation are still plaguing the U.S. labor market. 

But perhaps one of the most disheartening factors of the recovery has been persistently stagnant wages, which haven’t budged significantly for years.  That means that though the economy might seem to be on the mend, most people aren’t feeling or seeing the real benefits.  And that has ripple effects for people’s spending habits, preventing them from putting money back into the economy.  But the bigger problem for low-wage workers is that when stagnant wages are coupled with the rising cost of of living, paychecks don’t stretch as far.  The result is decreased purchasing power, a phenomenon, which the paper calls wage-loss.  And it’s much more problematic among the lowest-income workers.