It’s easy to forget now, but the original purpose of Labor Day wasn't to invite your friends over for a cookout, some beers, and one last chance to celebrate the summer. It was to recognize the contributions of American workers, at a time of struggle and unrest.

According to the Department of Labor, the first official celebration took place in New York, in September of 1882. It was the height of the Industrial Revolution—a time when American workers could expect to work twelve hours a day, seven days a week, but still live in poverty. They toiled in mills, factories, and mines without access to basic necessities like sanitary facilities, if they were even allowed to take breaks. Five-year-olds were sent to work to help support their families.

Pay and working conditions are a lot better now, obviously—thanks in no small part to the labor movement and laws, like the minimum wage, that it helped pass. But even the most basic financial security remains elusive for many Americans, as my colleague Danny Vinik noted recently. One reason is that many jobs simply don’t pay very well—and lots of people have those jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 22 percent of Americans hold one of the lowest paying jobs that the agency categorizes. Click on image above to enlarge

What are these jobs? We decided to take a look, by going through BLS statistics and compiling a set of the ten worst paying jobs in America. We adapted the official numbers in one important way: Going strictly by BLS categories, nine of the ten worst paying jobs are different occupations within the food services industry. We decided to group the jobs by industry—in other words, to lump all the food service industry jobs together, and then provide a salary range that includes the median wage for each one. We did the same for a three other industries: agriculture, recreation, and sales. The chart just above has all the information.

Not everybody in these jobs is struggling. Sometimes people in low-paying jobs are students, or take them part-time and, while they aren’t making much money, they also aren’t living in poverty. But of the Americans who are getting by on the federal minimum wage, it’s important to note that in 46 out of 50 states, women make up more than half of minimum wage workers. (I have written about this previously, for Forbes, if you want to read more details about the breakdown and its sources.) In the remaining four states, women still make up roughly half of minimum wage workers. This is one reason that 40 percent of households with single mothers as the sole breadwinner were in poverty. This, of course, plays into why the problem of reliable and affordable child care is so urgent. Child care, by the way, is the eleventh worst paid job in America. But that’s another story.