Amy Hempel Quotes

Most poor people earn more than minimum wage when they are working; their problem is not low wages. The problem comes when they are not working.

I never went too long without a job. The problem was a lot of the early jobs are almost more demoralizing than unemployment.

I was never interested in anything, particularly. I didn't get through school. I was a layabout. So, I started working at a theater to earn some money, as a part-time job.

People can't live on $7.50 an hour.

Waiting tables has never paid my bills, a fact which I prefer to hide from my colleagues with deep sighs about the price of just about everything.

I've had a year out of work, more, and just toughed it out. There are those who think that all actors are overpaid. I beg to differ.

I was literally just going and applying for jobs, and I couldn't get a job, and I was getting more and more broke, and you find yourself groveling for jobs you don't even want.

The working poor is a growing population in this country.

Unemployment is painful.

What is the cause of unemployment? Quite simply and unequivocally it is caused by paying ourselves more than the value of what we produce.

It was the unemployment that was the hardest to bear. The jobless millions were like an embolism in the nation's vital circulation; and while their indisputable existence argued more forcibly than any text that something was wrong with the system, the economists wrung their hands and racked their brains and called upon the spirit of Adam Smith, but could offer neither diagnosis or remedy.

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

Being unemployed - or working at minimum wage - is rough in the best of circumstances.

I cannot face the idea of life without work. What would one do when ideas failed or words refused to come? It is impossible not to shudder at the thought.

Anyway, I am unfitted to hold down a job anywhere unless they were to pay me for getting angry at the world." 96

A certain person wondered why a big strong girl like me wouldn't keep a job which paid a normal salary. I took my time to lead her and to read her every page. Even minimal people can't survive on minimal wage. A certain person wondered why I wait all week for you. I didn't have the words to describe just what you do. I said you had the motion of the ocean in your walk, and when you solve my riddles you don't even have to talk.

I was about to move out of my apartment because I was so broke. I'd sort of made a pact with myself that I wouldn't take a job unless it was interesting to me, and I became broke very fast.

But of course, now we're told we're in recovery but this sure doesn't feel like a recovery to more than 9 percent of the Americans out there who are unemployed, or the 16 percent of the African-Americans, 11 percent of Hispanics in the same position, or the millions who can only find part-time work or those who have even stopped looking for a job.

Students are suffering under incredibly high tuitions and high student loan interest rates. They graduate from school, and they're having a very difficult time finding a job. They don't feel as though there are honest leaders who are listening to them, and who will be a part of the solution.

Average wages now are still just barely above poverty, and one out of three Americans cannot afford healthcare even with the insurance,with jobs.

I know what it's like to see someone lose their job as a result of the European Union. I saw my father lose his job, I saw his business go to the wall, I saw 24 people who he employed also lose their jobs.

I don't got that kind of money man, commercials only pay so much (inaudible).

When I was forty, I was getting divorced, living in a low-class, dirty hotel in New York. My mother was dying of cancer. I owed $20,000. That was about the lowest. I came back to show business, and I couldn't get a job. I was turned down by every small-time agent in New York.

This [Gang of Eight bill (S.744)] is far, far too many low-skilled workers that are going to take jobs and pull down wages of people unemployed and underemployed right now.

People will always work harder if they're getting well paid and if they're afraid of losing a job which they know will be hard to equal. As is well known, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.