Moyers & Company — The federal government is the largest low-wage employer in the country — and that needs to end

Americans are coming to face the hard reality that they live in a new Gilded Age, with inequality at levels not seen since before the Great Depression. Even worse: Uncle Sam is subsidizing this lopsided economy.

The federal government is, indirectly, the largest low-wage employer in the country. While it has relatively few of the working poor on its payroll, the government hires thousands of private contractors that pay poverty wages to their workers, and hundreds of thousands of dollars to their executives.

A coalition of progressive groups are urging the Obama administration to issue an executive order requiring contractors to pay their workers a living wage — defined as the minimum required to meet one’s basic needs.

The Raw Story
The federal government is the largest low-wage employer in the country — and that needs to end
Moyers & Company