Low pay hurts many Utah working families

As many as a third of Utah's working families don't earn enough to support their families, and almost two-thirds lack the education they need to prosper, according to a report released Tuesday by Voices for Utah Children.

"Utah's Economy: The Future Is Here" is a cry for economic developers to scrutinize wage potential, worker training and support programs as ways to see that working low-income families can thrive in a changing economy. Those three factors are considered "crucial" to work-force development, said Allison Rowland, the report's author, who is budget and research director for Utah Children.

Fully 82 percent of Utah's low-income families are employed, compared with 72 percent nationally, the report says, but they're not always rewarded with enough money to cover basics, including food, shelter and health care. The report's numbers, she pointed out in a presentation to the Wasatch Front Economic Forum, are based on pre-recession, 2006 data — when Utah's economy was doing well. The challenges are now greater.

The report defines a low-income working family as one whose family members ages 15 or older "have a combined work effort of at least 39 weeks in a year or a combined work effort of at least 26 weeks and one unemployed parent actively seeking work in the last four weeks." The federal poverty line is $22,050 for a family of four. The report looked at families making up to twice that — and found almost 94,000 low-income working families, with a total 243,000 children.

The average age of Utah's work force is 28, so those who hold the key to prosperity for themselves and the state over the next few decades are already working, the report says. Giving them the tools for the future, such as access to secondary education, is essential to prepare them for a "knowledge-based economy."

The report also asks that workers whose jobs won't require college degrees not be left out of the state's future prosperity, because they will be needed, too.

"This means providing a state tax system that encourages work, as well as more robust support for child care and health care," the report says.

Jobs are increasingly in the service sector, Utah's cost of living is no longer significantly cheaper than in other parts of the country, and the state's tax system hits low-income working families the hardest, the report says. Those are issues economic developers need to consider for the future prosperity of the state and its workers, according to the report.

The report calls for a state earned-income tax credit to act as a work incentive and to help employers who rely on low-wage workers make jobs more attractive. The report also recommends strengthening reimbursed child-care program eligibility, streamlining Medicaid and SCHIP and including cost containment in health-care reform.

Troy Justesen, a development vice president at Salt Lake Community College, emphasized developing skills, whether working for a degree or not. And he noted that there is both great interest in and controversy surrounding any efforts to follow results as individuals go from high school to post-secondary training and into the work force. But such data is important to measure how well programs are working and their outcomes.

E-mail: lois@desnews.com