In 2021, 1.4% of workers in the United States were paid hourly rates at or below the official minimum wage. The percentage of hourly paid workers earning the prevailing federal minimum wage or less declined from 1.9% in 2019 to 1.5% in 2020, which remains well below the percentage of 13.4 recorded in 1979. Around 44.3 percent of wage and salary workers paid hourly rates at or below the federal minimum wage were aged between 16 to 24 years.
In the US it’s usually 2 part time jobs or 1 ft and 1 or or 1 ft and gigs. Regardless the idea isn’t that they make enough with one job and get spending money from the other. It’s basically that you need to make as much as the top 15% of earners in the US to be ok in most areas. So we work as hard as we can to survive
Big cities like Beijing or Shanghai in China are much worse, lower wages and rents north of $1000 and salaries of about $1350
Workers cram into one apartment just to have a place to sleep
You must not have ever seen a couple of folks making min wage renting a room just to survive. America may not be quite at that disparity level but it is rapidly approaching