These 11 Companies Are Paying Less and Keeping Americans Poor

The National Employment Law Office has uncovered a disturbing statistic. Since the job market hit a bottom in February 2010, lower-wage jobs have grown nearly three times faster than jobs that pay more.

While the recession has seen companies like McDonald's (NYSE: MCD) thrive -- a 130 percent surge in profits is nothing to scoff at -- the real wages of low-income Americans have declined.

This is a direct affront to the traditional American orthodoxy that over time, hard work will result in greater wages and upward mobility.

With the help of crowdsourced information from Payscale, Benzinga chose companies known for their low pay at random and documented the wages places like Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) , Lowe's (NYSE: LOW) and The Gap (NYSE: GPS) pay their workers.

The findings were not pretty.

The U.S. Government classifies those working full-time and making under $10.60 an hour to be poor.

In more than one case, we found companies like Yum Brands (NYSE: YUM) subsidiary Kentucky Fried Chicken whose median hourly wages for workers with more than 10 years of experience failed to crack $10 an hour.

Hourly wage ranges were chosen based off Payscale's crowdsourced reports of wages from the most common jobs at each employer.