Then there is the rare, highly skilled, and poorly paid job of being a good stay at home parent.

I watched an interesting interview with Elizabeth Warren talking about her new book, A Fighting Chance. She told the story of how, in her early fifties, her mother became a single parent with no other skills than home keeping. She immediately put on her best dress and shoes and applied for a minimum wage job at Sears, where he went to work supporting her family. Her point was that in that time, minimum wage could actually support a family, while now it is hardly enough to support a single person head of house hold. She pointed out that since then the minimum wage has barely crept up while worker productivity has increased times 22.

I think I can remember from my young days of single mother in my neighborhood that got by with poorly paying jobs.