A new report out of the University of Oregon says that taxpayers are in effect subsidizing corporations.
About 25 percent of Oregon's workforce earn twelve dollars an hour or less. At that low income, many workers qualify for public assistance like food stamps. Researchers from the university's Department of Sociology and the Labor Education and Research Center show that many of Oregon's low-earners work for large corporations in the retail, health care, and food service.
"Basically state and taxpayers are we helping these families subsidize their incomes because they get low wages working for the companies that they do," says Raahi Reddy, UO faculty member and one of the authors of the report.
"So we look at that as another form of subsidy to corporations who rely on low-wage labor for their own profit."
The report also shows that Oregon has one of the highest percentages of workers on public assistance and one of the lowest corporate tax rates in the nation.
Copyright 2015 Oregon Public Broadcasting
