The original content of Democracy Now! Headlines appears under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 License (United States). For more, including their other shows and media, visit www.democracynow.org. October 16, 2013 Report: Fast Food Workers' Reliance on Aid Costs Taxpayers $7 Billion Annually ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In economic news, new research shows more than half of low-wage workers at fast-food restaurants rely on public assistance to survive — a rate double that of the overall workforce. According to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, low wages in the fast-food industry cost American taxpayers nearly $7 billion every year — that is more than the entire annual budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A companion report by the National Employment Law Project found Mc Donald's alone costs Americans $1.2 billion annually by paying its workers insufficient wages. Last year the top 10 largest fast-food companies alone made more than $7.4 billion in profits. .