This all seems a little fishy to me. Who would work in Manhattan for 7.25/hour? I'm pretty sure McDonald's pays better than that where I live. I suppose newly arrived immigrants could conceivably drive down wages to that level, but I'm just not believing that this is a common occurence.
At any rate, the simple answer for these people is to move out of there.
The new Baxter robot starting at $22,000 costs less than $1/hour to operate, even in Manhattan, including financing costs, electricity, and maintenance. It speaks perfect English, needs no medical, injury, or unemployment insurance, needs no break time, no sleep, nothing. Someone soon is going to program these for burger flipping and offer them for $2/hour to fast food restaurants everywhere and make a killing.
