[IAmGraydon]

> "Target Workers Unite recently released a survey of more than 500 Target workers around the US, representing 382 different stores in 44 states. Only 12.7% of the workers who responded said they could survive on the wages from Target alone, with 56% of workers citing they have ran out of food while employed at Target, and 12.8% of workers reported experiencing homelessness."

The homelessness rate in the US general population is 0.2%. This survey indicates that in the Target-employed population, the homelessness rate is 64x higher? That does not compute on so many levels. I would have to suspect a massive methodology problem here. It also seems strange that they surveyed only 500 workers from 382 stores - only 1.3 workers per store! How was that one representative of an entire store chosen? This doesn’t scream manipulation via sample size to you?

[forgotmyoldname]

That doesn't mean they're currently homeless.

Being a Target employee also self-selects for low-wage demographics. Let's say the average target employee is in the bottom 20% of income (likely lower, maybe slightly higher, but definitely nowhere near the top 50%). This is saying 12.8% of these low-income individuals experienced a period of homelessness at some point. So 12.8% of 20% of the working poor experienced homelessness. That's saying that about 2.5% of the working poor experienced homelessness (potentially only days or weeks) at some point while working there (which many people work there for 5, 10, 20 years). Not unreasonable.

No different from saying 50% of people once went to college. 50% of people certainly aren't in college now, but at some point, they were.

[Frost1x]

Target employees 410k people according to Wikipedia. A sample size of 384 could represent a larger 500k population with 95% confidence and a 5% margin of error. I don't think the sample size is all that bad in the realm of surveys. How the sample was chosen is the critical piece here.