Poverty in the United States: Job Markets, Wages, and Economic Mobility


Mar 25
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
University of Richmond, Zoom gathering

Who gets to work, and at what wage, has never been a simple question, and right now the answers feel more uncertain than ever. This week, Intersections turns its lens on the labor market: what the latest jobs numbers reveal about who is bearing the greatest burden of economic instability, and why Black workers, especially Black women, are experiencing unemployment at a rate far outpacing their white counterparts. We'll also look ahead at artificial intelligence, which promises to reshape work in ways economists are only beginning to understand, and grapple with what that means for workers already on the margins.

Meeting Details

What Will Be Explored

  • The current state of the labor market, including February's troubling jobs report, with particular attention to the sharply disproportionate rise in unemployment among Black workers and Black women, driven by federal workforce cuts, the rollback of DEI programs, and a slump in manufacturing
  • The critical distinctions between minimum wage, living wage, and poverty wage, and what those differences mean in practice for working families
  • The potential near- and long-term impact of AI on employment and wages, including provocative questions about whether we are approaching a fundamental devaluation of human labor
  • Social and political attitudes toward economic mobility, who is expected to "move up," who gets help doing so, and what that reveals about our values as a society

What Attendees Will Gain

  • An understanding of the complex, intersecting forces that shape the labor market, from policy and technology to race and geography
  • An appreciation for the depth and pace of disruption AI is bringing to work, and why economists themselves hold sharply differing views about what comes next
  • Awareness of how social attitudes toward economic mobility affect both policy choices and the lived experiences of people in poverty

Reflection Questions

  1. What is the right balance between an unfettered labor market and one that is regulated? Where do you draw the line, and why?
  2. To what degree should individuals bear responsibility for their own economic mobility, and to what degree is that the role of government or community?
  3. When you look at the February jobs numbers, what concerns you most, and who do you think is most affected in your own community?
  4. If AI does substantially reduce the demand for human labor, what do you think the right social response would be: universal basic income, universal basic capital, something else entirely?
  5. Have you or someone you know navigated the difference between a job that pays minimum wage and one that pays a true living wage? What did that difference feel like in daily life?
  6. What assumptions do we make, consciously or not, about why some people are poor or unemployed? How might those assumptions shape policy?

Please email Dr. Keith W. McIntosh at cio@richmond.edu, for more information about Intersections and to receive the pre-discussion materials for this session.