The Chain Gang

America’s Restaurant Workers Receive $9 Billion Per Year in Welfare

A major tax burden.
A major tax burden. Photo: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images

Another major round of fast-food walkouts is scheduled for today, and if protestors need more ammo, an advocacy group just published a study with an eye-catching number: $9,434,067,497. That’s the amount of welfare workers get, as a group, each year.

The report is meant to underscore the high public cost of low wages, and its findings include:

• About one fifth of all restaurant workers live in poverty.

• Tipped employees, meanwhile, or those making $2.13 an hour plus gratuities, experience poverty at two and half times the rate of the overall U.S. workforce.

• Almost half of all workers’ families are on at least one public-assistance program.

• Worst of all, this means each location of Olive Garden costs taxpayers $196,970 a year.

[ROC]

America’s Restaurant Workers Receive $9 Billion Per Year in Welfare