Tom Perez Quotes

Too many jobs don't pay enough to get by, let alone get ahead.

Americans shouldn't have to hold down two or three jobs to make ends meet.

How can anyone live off of minimum wage?

I don't know if I can live on my income or not - the government won't let me try it.

In reality, most of America's poor work hard, often in two or more jobs.

It is unacceptable that someone can work full time - and work hard - and not be able to lift themselves out of poverty.

The working poor is a growing population in this country.

There are far too many people who get up early in the morning, and work hard, who cannot make ends meet.

My mother saved our home with a minimum wage job. But in the 1960s, a minimum wage job would support a family of three above the poverty line. Not today. Not even close. I understood right then that people can work hard, they can play by the rules, and they can still take a hard smack.

People can't live on $7.50 an hour.

I was very poor and I was a waitress, and it's hard to be a poor waitress in New York.

Today a minimum wage earner has to work a day and a half just to pay for a full tank of gas. That is simply shameful.

I live in southern Appalachia, so I'm surrounded by people who work very hard for barely a living wage. It's particularly painful that people are working the farms their parents and grandparents worked but aren't living nearly as well.

Does anyone really believe it is possible to make even the most basic ends meet on $5.15 an hour?

It's hard for me to understand how working-class people support themselves.

What keeps me up at night is poverty and unemployment.

The bottom line is that five million low-income Americans working full time for minimum wage, deserve a raise.

America's vast population of working poor can only get so poor before even Walmart is out of reach.

Coronavirus has exposed for all what many of us already knew - some of our most important workers have barely enough to live on, and millions are condemned to financial insecurity, inequality and food poverty.

No one wants to work for little money; otherwise, they would be living on the streets.

We should be helping people who actually need it, people working hard while their paychecks aren't increasing as much as they should.

I was working at Lowes and Target, then FedEx, and still did not have enough money to pay rent on my own.

Work does have some value and some dignity, but I don't think working 14 hours and not being able to pay your bills, or working two jobs and not being able - there's nothing inherently dignified about that.

There's a lot of journalism about poverty, but sometimes it just helps to see that there's a real person who becomes a real mom, who is working with unsustainable wages that could eventually destroy her.

Of course you've got a low unemployment rate when people have got to work two and three jobs just to make ends meet.