Working Poor Want Skills

By AMY WESTFELDT - AP

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) - Most of the nation's working poor are eager to learn new job skills, but are hampered by a lack of access to education and the Internet, according to a new study.  The poll of 500 people across the nation with family incomes no more than twice the poverty level also found that the working poor are more willing to work long hours and sleep less to get ahead than the rest of the population.

``These are people that have the same work ethic, if not more so, than the rest of the American population,'' said Carl Van Horn, director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University. ``There are other reasons why they're not succeeding.''

The study, released Thursday, recommended more access to job training, child care and public transportation, as well as an increase in the $5.15-an-hour minimum wage, to bring people back from the edge of poverty.

One in five Americans is considered among the working poor, with incomes that don't rise above double the poverty level, according to government figures. The federal poverty level is $16,450 for a family of four. Eighty of the 500 people surveyed for Thursday's poll were unemployed at the time, but belonged to working poor households.

The poll by the Heldrich Center and the University of Connecticut's Center for Research and Analysis defined the typical working poor American as a single white woman, aged 30-49, with a 40-hour-a-week job, an annual income of less than $25,000 and at least one child under the age of 18.

About seven in 10 of those surveyed are paid by the hour, and more than six in 10 have either no paid vacation or a week or less a year.

Eighty-two percent of those surveyed said they needed more education to get the job they want, but only 18 percent had received financial support from an employer for education or job training.

By comparison, 36 percent of the nonpoor population said their employers had helped pay for their education, the study said, relying on two earlier polls of 2,000 working adults.

Only 9 percent of the respondents had a college education, while 19 percent had not graduated high school, the study said.  Thirty-nine percent of the respondents said they have access to the Internet, and less than half have access to a computer at work or home. Seventy-six percent of the working public have access to the Internet and more than 70 percent have computers at work and at home, the study said.

Van Horn said the poor are hurt by not having computer access in an economy that is increasingly driven by technology.  The poll also found that 24 percent of the working poor would be willing to work longer hours, twice as much as the rest of the population, and 33 percent aren't concerned about getting enough sleep, again twice as much as the rest of the population.

Greg Acs, a researcher on poverty at the Urban Institute, said his data supported many of the poll's findings. But he said the statistic on work hours is not surprising, because low-wage workers generally work far less than the rest of the population.

The poll, conducted by telephone between May 22 and June 15, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

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