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This report estimates the public cost of low-wage jobs in the fast-food industry. Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit and the other public benefits programs discussed in this report provide a vital support system for millions of Americans working in the United States' service industries, including fast food. [The authors] analyse public program utilisation by working families and estimate total average annual public benefit expenditures on the families of front-line fast-food workers for the years 2007-2011. For this analysis [the authors] focus on jobs held by core, front-line fast-food workers, defined as non-managerial workers who work at least 11 hours per week for 27 or more weeks per year.

More than half (52 per cent) of the families of front-line fast-food workers are enrolled in one or more public programs, compared to 25 per cent of the workforce as a whole. The cost of public assistance to families of workers in the fast-food industry is nearly seven billion dollars per year. At an average of 3.9 billion dollars per year, spending on Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) accounts for more than half of these costs. Due to low earnings, fast-food workers' families also receive an annual average of 1.04 billion dollars in food stamp benefits and 1.91 billion dollars in earned income tax credit payments. People working in fast-food jobs are more likely to live in or near poverty. One in five families with a member holding a fast-food job has an income below the poverty line, and 43 per cent have an income two times the federal poverty level or less. Even full-time hours are not enough to compensate for low wages. The families of more than half of the fast-food workers employed 40 or more hours per week are enrolled in public assistance programs.

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