When he moved to Vermont for school, Kulsic landed in one of the most progressive states in the country in terms of employee wage-and-hour laws. Vermont’s current minimum wage, at $8.73 an hour, is one of the highest in the country, nearly $1.50 above the federal minimum wage. It will rise to $9.60 in 2016, $10 in 2017, and $10.50 in 2018. The state approved these increases this summer, well before voters in states across the country, including Arkansas and South Dakota, passed minimum-wage increases at the ballot box.

Vermont was also the first state in the country to pass a “Right to Request” law, which allows any worker to ask for scheduling changes for any reason without fear of employer retaliation. The law requires an employer to consider such requests at least twice a year. In 2013, Vermont strengthened a law that requires men and women be paid equally for equal work. The state also allows workers to disclose their own wages and inquire about others' wages without their employers' permission.

Though these laws surely helped some Vermonters, interviews with Kulsic and other low-wage workers in the state indicate that minimum-wage-and-scheduling laws barely begin to solve the problems that poverty creates in states across the country. That’s because the nature of low-wage work has changed dramatically in the last decade, as companies shift to more part-time workers who have little control over their schedules, and because the cost of living has been growing much faster than wages have.

Kulsic would love more control over his schedule, so he can take a few classes or get a second job. But he’d never heard of the "Right to Request" law, and says people at his workplace get let go if they ask for anything at work–whether it be more hours or day shifts.

His bosses “have been known to ignore time-off requests, and usually folks are too afraid of severance to request anything,” Kulsic said.

A study released this summer by researchers at the University of Chicago indicates that the problems that Kulsic faces are widespread. Looking at the schedules of adults 26 to 32 in the labor market, it found that 75 percent of workers in hourly jobs reported fluctuations in the number of hours they worked per week, sometimes by more than eight hours. In the food service industry, 90 percent of workers said their hours fluctuated, on average, by 68 percent. Only one-third of hourly workers were allowed any input into their work schedule, according to the report.

“There’s been a real shift in what proportion of workers are full-time versus part time,” said Susan Lambert, a University of Chicago professor and one of the authors of the study. “Some workers get full or stable hours, but everyone else is fighting for more hours, scrambling for more hours.”

It’s the nature of the post-recession economy: Fewer workers are getting as many hours as they need. Last month, there were 7 million Americans working part-time for economic reasons—either because they could only find part-time work, or because business was slow—up from 4.3 million in October 2007. Often, low-wage workers need to be employed for a few months or years before their bosses give them full-time work. So workers know that quitting a low-paying, part-time job to find another will rarely yield a better situation.