breaking out of the minimum wage tier job market into something that pays better isn't always easy, though. can be hard to get education/experience on your own
Well yeah of course, every society will have certain percentage of "losers" in the competition, this number will never be zero.
However, at least in the US, according to Google AI, the amount of Americans work at $7.25 or below is 1.3%.
I am not sure why is it a big deal that 1.3% of people are poor in a society. If 40% of people are poor, that's a big problem. But 1.3% isn't a huge number nor I think 98.7% of the population should worry about that. They should worry about something else more important instead.
If 98.7% of people worry about 1.3% of population being poor all the time and hinder themselves for it, I think a nation will stagnant in terms of growth.
There are more important things to do for a society to improve, and that thing isn't lower poor population from 1.3% to 0. The ROI to pursue this kind of ideal is too low due to diminishing returns IMO.