[pmorici]

I don’t believe your premise that such a large share of the available jobs are low skill that there is no room for people to move on to something better. If you look at fast food for example I’m seeing there are about 2.5 million workers which is a tiny percentage of the overall workforce. Looking at the age distribution of the US work force you could staff every fast food restaurant with only 16-19 year olds and still only be employing about half of that age groups work force.

https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11b.htm

[enragedcacti]

why would you seek out statistics for one single industry that you perceive as low skill rather than just finding low wage statistics specifically?

44% of U.S. workers are employed in low wage jobs with a median annual wage of $18,000. [1]

Sure we can staff fast food with only 16-19 year olds but what about every other sector of the service industry and the myriad of other "low skill" jobs? are there 40 million plus "high skill" jobs out there waiting for the taking? The answer is no. [2]

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minimum-wage-2019-almost-half-o...

[2] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/11/21/low-wag...