Fast food is a staple of American culture, but some of its workers struggle to survive

FRESNO, Texas (AP) — The only moment TiAnna Yeldell has to herself is when she’s sleeping, and that doesn’t happen much.

The 44-year-old single mom of three works 80-hour weeks to provide for her children, ages 8, 14, and 18. During the day, she is a driver for Pizza Hut, where she earns $9.50 an hour before tips. At night, she cleans trains for Houston’s Metro system, where she earns about $17 an hour.

The times that she pulls both shifts, Yeldell sleeps for just two to three hours before getting her kids up and ready for school. Then she does it all over again.

Yeldell is among the millions of fast food workers across the U.S. scraping to get by. About two-thirds of them are women, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and many are supporting their families on minimum wages set at the federal government’s floor of $7.25 an hour. Fast food workers are disproportionately Hispanic, making up 24.6% of the industry’s workforce compared with 18.8% of the overall workforce. And more than half of all U.S. fast food workers are 20 or older, “contrary to the myth of it being a teenage job that they just do for pocket money,” said Tsedeye Gebreselassie, an attorney for nonprofit advocacy organization National Employment Law Project.

President Donald Trump, who manned the fry station at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania while on the campaign trail last year, has acknowledged that the federal minimum wage is “very low” and that he would consider raising it, but that doing so would be “complicated.”

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Meanwhile, a growing number of states have pushed to increase their minimum wage in the face of record-high inflation in recent years. Voters in Alaska approved a ballot initiative in November that will raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour from $11.73 an hour by 2027. Missouri voters likewise approved a minimum wage hike to $15 from $12.30 an hour by 2026. And California — which has one of the highest costs of living in the country — in April raised wages for fast food workers specifically, to $20 an hour from $16 an hour.

By the end of this year, 23 states and 65 cities and counties will raise their minimum wage floors, according to a December 2024 National Employment Law Project report that combed through legislation across the country.

But not Texas, where Yeldell and her family live. It is one of 20 states at the $7.25 federal minimum wage floor and that rate hasn’t budged since 2009. Democratic lawmakers in Texas have repeatedly proposed legislation to raise the minimum wage in the state to no avail. Preemption laws, which exist in Texas and many other states, block cities and counties from adopting their own minimum wage laws, presenting another barrier.

Today, a living wage for one adult raising three children in the Houston metro area is $57.65 an hour, according to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator. For Yeldell, it’s not possible to get by on her fast food job alone, which is why she must work a second job.

Still wearing her visor and gray “No One Out Pizzas The Hut” shirt, she slumps sideways after a recent work shift, resting an elbow on the folding table surrounded by four folding chairs where the family eats. The living room furniture is sparse but the home is tidy. A yellow mop bucket sits near the entryway, and a small vacuum rests against the closet door. She only takes a moment to rest before changing into Looney Tunes sweatpants and a yellow T-shirt, scooping fajitas onto plates for the kids’ dinner, and packing up the leftovers. Then the teens disappear into their bedrooms, and her Minecraft pajama-clad youngest curls up next to her on the couch, playing a game on a bright red console.

“I don’t want to work two jobs -- I’m really tired. But I have to, because the jobs don’t pay enough,” Yeldell said. “I would not be able to provide a roof over my kids’ head … They come first, I come second.”

The Associated Press reached out to Pizza Hut, as well as its parent company, Yum Brands, for comment on wages for fast food workers but did not hear back.

Wages are just one of many issues fast food workers face. Unpredictable hours, limited access to paid sick leave, and challenging customer interactions all shape their experiences, said Daniel Schneider, co-director and co-founder of the Shift Project, a joint Harvard and University of California, San Francisco project researching the conditions of service sector work.

Wage theft and other law violations are also common in the industry, added labor scholar David Madland, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

“The fast food industry is notorious for low pay and poor working conditions,” Madland said. “It’s seen as the almost the sort of typical throwaway job that policy has cared very little about.”

Yeldell’s Pizza Hut deliveries sometimes go until 11 p.m. She carries a knife in her pocket, as well as a flashlight, to keep her safe.

Despite the challenges, Yeldell maintains a positive outlook about her job, which she started about a year and a half ago as a delivery driver and has since learned to do “pretty much everything” at her Fresno, Texas store, including making pizzas, prepping ingredients, and running the register.

“Pizza Hut is a really easy job and the job is only hard if you make it hard,” she said. “And I’m a fast learner, so it doesn’t bother me. The only time that it’s worrisome is when we’re slow and they say, ‘Oh, we got to cut your hours.’”

Contrast Texas to California, which now has the highest fast food minimum wage of any state since lawmakers passed a minimum $20 hourly wage for those workers.

Angelica Hernandez, 51, who has worked at various McDonald’s restaurants for 20 years and now works for a Monterey Park location in Los Angeles County, said the raise helped her pay rent and bills on time, avoid late fees, and buy “a bit more” at the grocery store. It’s also allowed her family the chance to go out to eat on the weekends, “which I was never able to do before, so it’s a big accomplishment what fast food workers were able to win,” she said.

But Hernandez says much of the increase was swallowed by a recent $200 rent hike. “We need a little more to be able to save money and buy clothes without being tight every two weeks or have to use credit,” she said.

Now, Hernandez is a member of California Fast Food Workers Union, and councilmember on the state’s Fast Food Council established by the new California law and aimed at improving working conditions.

Critics of the law say continuing to increase minimum wage is not the answer, arguing that it has raised prices and reduced job opportunities for young people, pinching franchisees in an industry with already-slim margins.

“When you see a spike in operating costs pretty dramatically in a short period of time, it creates challenges,” said Jot Condie, president and CEO of the California Restaurant Association, which opposed the law. He added that franchisees, who are essentially small business owners, are most harmed.

But a September report from University of California, Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment called the effects of the new law “benign,” and found that the policy did not affect employment adversely and increased prices about 3.7%, or about 15 cents on a $4 hamburger.

For Yeldell, increasing the minimum wage in Texas “would be more fair.”

”If other states could change, y’all can change too,” she said.

Her exhaustion shines through: her movements are slow, and her eyelids droop. Between her two jobs, she has no days off so her activities with the kids have to happen on the days she works at one job, not both. But she makes it happen.

On a chilly Friday morning at 7 a.m., she walks her youngest to the bus stop, then drives her daughter across town to have her senior pictures done before her Pizza Hut shift starts.

At the photography studio, Yeldell and her daughter pose for a selfie against a backdrop that reads “Class of ’25.” Yeldell wears a sleek, royal blue dress that reads “Faith” in white cursive text, her daughter in a black cap and gown. Both women’s hair is arranged in long, elegant braids with the ends curled.

“Being a mother, I do what I’m supposed to do for my kids,” she said.

But for all her hard work, Yeldell says the family has little to no savings. On good months, she says she has about $100 left over. Often, she has nothing, which leaves no room for vacations, or outings with kids.

“At the end of the day, I’ve worked all these hours and I really have nothing to show for it, but just paying some bills,” she said.

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