Fact Checker: Kamala Harris’s misfired talking point: 'Majority of women are minimum wage workers'
By Glenn Kessler Glenn Kessler The Fact Checker Email Bio Follow April 25 at 3:00 AM “The majority of women are minimum wage workers.” A reader wondered about this comment, which certainly would be shocking if true.
Regular readers know The Fact Checker has long called attention to the inadequacy of this number — it is simply a ratio of the difference between women’s median annual earnings and men’s median earnings. There certainly is a gap, but when you account for various factors, such as life and career choices, the gap narrows from 20 cents on the dollar to just 8 cents. We have previously labeled this to be a Two-Pinocchio claim.
Labor Department data analyzed by the National Women’s Law Center concluded that women represent more than 6 in 10 minimum wage workers across the country, and close to three-quarters of minimum wage workers in some states. Anyway, back to Harris. Her talking point appeared way off course. We brought our data to her aides and they quickly said mea culpa. “She meant a majority of minimum wage workers are women; it was a slip of the tongue on live TV,” spokesman Ian Sams said.Two-thirds of minimum wage workers are women. That means we've got to change a system that forces a mom trying to keep a roof over her family’s head and food on the table to hold down two jobs just to earn $15,000 a year.
— Kamala Harris August 4, 2016 The Pinocchio Test Regular readers know that we generally do not award Pinocchios when politicians admit error, and we certainly give an allowance for a slip of the tongue during a live event. We don’t play gotcha at The Fact Checker.
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