Puzder and others have defended these poor working conditions by arguing that these are meant to be entry level jobs for teenagers looking to gain work experience. Yet today’s fast food workforce no longer matches this picture: recent data from the Census Bureau show that two-thirds of the industry’s workforce is aged 20 or older, and more than 20 percent of fast food workers are raising children, struggling to support them on fluctuating schedules and poverty wages.

Today a growing percentage of U.S. employment has come to resemble fast food jobs: a quarter of the nation’s working households depending on the pay of low-wage workers including Americans working in the retail, home health care, and food service industries. On its current path, the economy is set to generate more of the same: analysis of U.S. Department of Labor statistics reveals that 28 percent of the new jobs being created over the next decade will be in occupations paying median hourly wages below $12 an hour.

Only smart employment policies and strong enforcement by the Department of Labor can change the trend toward an economy based on low paying fast food-style jobs. The modernized overtime pay rule put forth by President Obama would boost incomes for 12.5 million salaried workers including managers in fast food restaurants and retail outlets. Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would lift millions more working households out of poverty. Strengthening the ability of working people to join together in unions could help transform service sector jobs just as unions raised standards for dirty, dangerous and low-paying manufacturing and mining jobs in the last century. Yet Andrew Puzder has ties to anti-union groups and has spoken out against the minimum wage and overtime, insisting that “a national minimum wage would be ineffective,” and that the overtime rule would “be another barrier to the middle class rather than a springboard.”

The Fight for 15 movement began in 2012 when hundreds of fast food workers in New York City walked off the job calling for a $15 wage and the right to form a union. In the years following, they were joined by child care workers, retail associates, airport employees, adjunct university faculty and a wide range of other working people pushing back against fast food-style wages and jobs seeping into many corners of the U.S. economy.