United States

Oxfam helps low-income people in the U.S. survive short-term emergencies. Over the long term, we help workers earn a decent wage, safeguard their health and safety, and find pathways to advancement so they can have better futures.

A New Era for Black Women Initiative

Oxfam’s research has shown that Black women are disproportionately represented in the low-wage workforce: More than 50% of Black women earn less than $15 an hour, and they are the sole breadwinner in more than half of Black households.

Oxfam works closely with Black women and organizations representing them to build a movement that will define and promote policies for higher paying jobs, job protections, more resources for job training and other ways to break down barriers to upward mobility. The goal is to address the root causes of the economic inequality that is affecting Black women in the Southeast, including Georgia, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

Oxfam launched the New Era for Black Women’s Initiative at Essence Fest in June 2023, and is undertaking a listening tour throughout the Southeast region to hear from low-wage earners about their economic realities and hopes for the future. Our plan is to start working closely with Black women’s groups in the Southeast to co-create and support implementation of a Black women’s policy and advocacy agenda that addresses racial, gender, social justice, and economic inequality.

U.S. Gulf Coast

The last 20 years have presented numerous challenges to the people and environment of the Gulf Coast, one of the most vital, and most impoverished, regions of the country. When the BP oil spill hit in 2010, coastal communities were still recovering from several devastating hurricanes (including Katrina, in 2005) which killed hundreds of people, destroyed homes and businesses, battered wetlands, and decimated the seafood industry. The COVID-19 pandemic took a particularly brutal toll on people of color in the Gulf states.

Oxfam America has worked in the region since launching its first domestic humanitarian response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. With funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Oxfam has maintained a Good Jobs program in Louisiana and Mississippi for the last six years, with the goals of strengthening work force development and policy advocacy at state and local levels.

Our partners have included New Way Mississippi, Dependable Source, Dress for Success, MS Black Women’s Roundtable, Mississippi Urban League, One Voice, Louisiana Urban League, and Poor People’s Campaign. In the area of workforce training alone, since 2017 this program has supported the enrollment of 1,389 jobseekers and resulted in 856 graduates and 861 job placements.

Working poor advocacy agenda

Oxfam also conducts vital and groundbreaking research that exposes the realities of life for the working poor in the U.S.

• Our Best States to Work Index (BSWI) assesses and ranks states based on labor policies. Since the first edition in 2018, BSWI has encouraged a race to the top: better policies for workers in terms of minimum wages, worker protections, and rights to organize. Recently, the BSWI has examined working conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic, and specific polices that affect women workers.
• For nearly a decade, Oxfam has been advocating to raise the federal minimum wage, which has been stuck at the poverty wage of $7.25 an hour since 2009. Since 2014, we have produced regular editions of a low-wage map, which illustrates the impact of low wages on populations by gender, race, and family status. Nearly one-third of workers in the US earn less than $15 an hour, according to research by Oxfam published in 2022.
• Oxfam also works with partners and supporters to push for policies and actions that reduce, redistribute, reward, and recognize care work while also ensuring care workers and caregivers are represented in decision-making spaces. During the pandemic’s early years, we advocated for COVID-19 relief bills to include paid family and medical leave, paid sick leave, enough funding to stabilize the child care industry, and expanded child tax credits (and child- and dependent-care tax credits). In 2023, Oxfam co-authored U.S. Care Policy Scorecard that documented inadequate policies that should better support working families, care givers, and care workers. In collaboration with allies and partners in the United States, Oxfam is looking for other legislative solutions to making child care affordable and accessible for families, while paying child care workers higher wages. Oxfam and our allies and partners are advocating for better wages and federally mandated paid family and medical leave, paid sick leave, and funding for home and community care services for the elderly and disabled.
• In 2023 Oxfam published Where Hard Work Doesn’t Pay Off, which tracked 56 policies across 38 nations in three key dimensions: wages, worker protections, and rights to organize. The report and interactive map compared policies among economic peer nations and found that the U.S. is far behind other rich countries when it comes to policies that support workers and working families. The report provided recommendations for federal policymakers to better support workers and their families.