Low-Wage America: Marzs Mata

By Noah Adams

Published June 22, 2003 at 10:00 PM MDT

Marzs Mata waits for the third and final bus of her three-hour commute home from her job in the suburbs to downtown Detroit.

NPR's Noah Adams reports from Detroit, Mich., the last stop on a driving trip north on I-75 that began two weeks earlier in Knoxville, Tenn.

Adams talks with Marzs Mata, who works for ComCast customer service in a Detroit suburb, commuting by bus from the southwest part of downtown.

Adams goes along for her bus ride home -- a three-bus, almost three-hour ordeal. Mata doesn't have a car, can't afford to live near her job, and spends about five hours a day getting to and from work.

Noah Adams

Noah Adams, long-time co-host of NPR's All Things Considered, brings more than three decades of radio experience to his current job as a contributing correspondent for NPR's National Desk., focusing on the low-wage workforce, farm issues, and the Katrina aftermath. Now based in Ohio, he travels extensively for his reporting assignments, a position he's held since 2003.