WORKERS

Guardian - Grocery prices have surged in recent years, rising by almost 27% since the months before the pandemic. Workers inside grocery stores have been hit particularly hard.“We’re often the people down at the bottom of the food chain when it comes to wages,” said Conor Watson, a meat cutter at a Kroger-owned Fred Meyer store in Ellensburg, Washington. “And we’re very, very impacted with these rising prices.”Witnessing inflation’s rapid rise on shelves was “incredibly frustrating”, he said. “We were, every week, going around and changing our price tags and increasing the prices on items – and seeing our wages do nothing.”

More than 3.2 million Americans work in grocery stores in the US. While the median hourly wage for non supervisor employees has increased from $14.91 in 2020 to $17.88 in 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, average weekly hours dropped from 30 hours in 2020 to 28.5 last year – a record low – as grocery chains cut back workers’ hours.