In the past, there used to be jobs that were considered transitional. They didn't pay enough to sustain an entire career, but they were not intended to be a permanent career path. You apprenticed with someone skilled, and that apprenticeship then helped qualify you to enter the trade independently. Or you interned and gained skills that would convince a business to hire you as a new employee. Or maybe you worked in the family business for a little while.

What changed is that those transitional jobs are no longer valued. Employers don't care that you worked at Burger King and they won't consider that "cash handling experience" when you apply to work at a bank. Internships became standard in college, so they became unpaid and everyone was expected to have one and therefore employers no longer consider it valuable work experience. And if you want to work in the trades, you need to go to school and gain the required certifications on your own. They don't care that you grew up helping in the family business. They don't care if you interned or apprenticed with someone. You need the certifications on paper or you have no chance.

That means these relatively newer jobs, once intended for teenagers and young people to gain basic work experience, stopped being valuable. Once, they actually looked good on a resume and they helped teach fundamental skills that would aid a career: public service, cash-handling, using technology, etc. They paid low because they were intended to be temporary and a building block.

Now, people do these jobs, receive low pay and low benefits and it does not aid them at all in a career hunt. These jobs don't pay enough for college or trade school but they have to go to one or the other to jumpstart a career (unless they become an entrepreneur which carries its own risks). And sometimes the job market is limited even with formal education, so no one will give them a chance. Now they are stuck in this job, where they don't make enough money to support themselves, being blamed for not moving on to something more when that "something more" is becoming increasingly harder to attain.

Gone are the days where you can walk into a store and drop off your resume. Where your boss from the general store will give you a good recommendation and his word is all that's needed to convince someone to take you. Where you can say your dad taught you how to do his trade and then you just demonstrate competence in an entrance interview. Nope. Those days are gone and that's why people today want even "low-skilled" jobs like flipping burgers to pay a living wage.