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The Hollywood image of the care-free, freckle-faced, teenage hamburger flipper is no longer the norm.

By Amy Langfield, NBC News contributor

Wendy Lott's career has made a detour to a small-town pizzeria in South Carolina.

She works 10 hours a week making pizza for minimum wage. She has no other job, no health insurance and no idea how she can afford to go back to college, let alone pay the hospital that treated her asthma-related bronchitis.

She’s 27, lives with her mother and most of her take-home pay goes to gas and household items. “It would be nice to get off food stamps, but on $62, I can’t,” Lott said, referring to her weekly take-home pay from her $7.25-an-hour minimum-wage job.

In many ways, she is a typical fast-food worker: She's older than you'd expect, has more years of schooling and works in the industry not for entry-level experience, but to try to keep her head above the financial storm that threatens to swamp her. 

Due to the lingering effects of the Great Recession, the Hollywood image of the care-free, freckle-faced, teenage hamburger flipper is no longer the norm. Only 16 percent of fast food industry jobs now go to teens, down from 25 percent a decade ago.

And many of the older workers are educated. More than 42 percent of restaurant and fast-food employees over the age of 25 have at least some college education, including 753,000 with a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

Related story: Fast food workers serve up classic role in pop culture

In many cases, teens have been squeezed out of the workforce before they even begin. While the overall U.S. population posted an unemployment rate of 7.6 in March, for teenagers 16 through 19, it was 24.2 percent, according to the BLS.

“Young people have been hit very hard by this downturn,” said Harry Holzer, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University. Studies show a worker's most rapid wage growth happens in the 5 to 10 years after graduation as you switch jobs and find what you’re good at, Holzer said. “That whole process is disrupted by this downturn.”

Ed Maker / The Denver Post file

On average fast-food employees work only 24 hours a week. Those who can get full-time hours make a median annual salary of $17,813 a year.

Fast-food workers are part of the lowest-paying major occupational group in the United States, according to government data. On average they work only 24 hours a week. Those who can get full-time hours make a median annual salary of $17,813 a year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Others find they don’t get as many hours as they need, and erratic schedules make it difficult to juggle more than one job at a time.

“I’ve been trying to find a better job,” said Lott, who has been requesting more hours for the entire year she’s been at the pizza place. Two weeks ago she was turned down for a grocery store job she hoped would supplement her 10-hour week schedule. “I was not hired because I wasn’t available enough,” she said.

The food services industry is rebounding faster than the rest of the economy, and has been creating jobs. Prior to the Great Recession, 35 percent of industry employers said their No. 1 worry was recruiting and retaining employees, according to the Restaurant Industry Tracking Survey. This year, only 5 percent said it was a prime problem.

“With the national jobless rate hovering around 8 percent and more than 20 million individuals still unemployed or underemployed, the labor pool remains sufficiently deep for most,” said the National Restaurant Association's 2013 outlook.

Restaurant industry officials have argued they provide good first-time jobs for many people, and that President Barack Obama's proposed increase in the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9 by the end of 2015 would hurt them.

Related: Most memorable fast-food workers in movies, TV

“The restaurant industry is dominated by small businesses. More than seven in ten eating and drinking establishments are single-unit operations,” Melvin Sickler, who operates Auntie Anne’s Pretzels and Cinnabon franchises in New Jersey, told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in March. “Food and labor costs are the two most significant line items for a restaurant. With average pre-tax margins of roughly 4 to 6 percent, increases in food and labor costs can have a dramatic impact on a restaurant’s bottom line.”

Not everyone agrees.

The corporations have intentionally created a “disposable workforce” with high turnover rates, argues Saru Jayaraman, the author of “Behind the Kitchen Door” and director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California at Berkeley. The restaurant industry lobbies against a hike in the minimum wage and intentionally keeps workers at minimal hours with erratic schedules to prevent them from being able to organize or claim benefits, she said.

“People are piecing together jobs to work full-time,” said Jayaraman, who is also the co-founder of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers.

Keystone / Hulton Archive / Getty Images

Fast-food employees are not like they used to be. Today, more than 42 percent of restaurant and fast-food employees over the age of 25 have at least some college education. About 753,000 have a bachelor's degree or higher.

Some fast-food chains are doing it right, Jayaraman said, such as Five Guys and In-N-Out Burger.

In-N-Out, for example, starts its employees at $10 per hour and offers benefits. “We do enjoy lower turnover and that, of course, leads to a more experienced team working in our restaurants,” Carl Van Fleet, the vice president of planning and development at In-N-Out Burger, told NBC News via email. “Our associates do work pretty hard to make sure our customers have a great experience. A higher pay structure is helpful in making that happen but it is only part of our approach. It is equally important to us that we treat our associates well and maintain that positive working environment in all of our restaurants.”

As for Wendy Lott, she continues to look for another job and hopes to find a way to finish her final year at the Art Institute of Atlanta, where she was working toward a bachelor’s degree in video game art and design. But when she left, due to her father’s death from diabetes, she was already in arrears for $5,000.

A slip-and-fall at her first waitress job left her with a torn Achilles tendon and fractured ankle that still causes her pain and limits her work options. She said the one-time $800 worker’s compensation payment doesn’t help long term. “A lot of jobs in my area require heavy lifting or for you to be fast on your feet,” she said.

And she finds the competition for the other jobs is tough, especially with layoffs at the nearby Savannah River Site nuclear facility. “Everybody gets underemployed across the board. It trickles down,” Lott said.

David Friedman / NBC News

Kathleen Campbell, 85, stays with her daughter's family in Hawthorne, N.Y., while she is displaced from her home in Breezy Point. Campbell's daughter Ann Marie Pawlowicz, and granddaughters Kalina, 16, and Julia, 8, play with the family dog in the background.

Kathleen Campbell has had a bad night. It’s nothing a cup of fresh brewed tea won’t fix, but Campbell, 85, likely faces many more less-than-comfortable nights on her daughter’s living room sofa.

Just three months ago, Campbell was riding her three-wheeled cycle on the smooth and level streets of Breezy Point, a cheerful and close-knit community at the far end of the islands called the Rockaways in Queens. Now she is shuttling among three houses – her daughter Ann Marie Pawlowicz’s 1890s home in Westchester, N.Y., another daughter in New Jersey and her sister’s home near Philadelphia.

Campbell’s lifestyle is one of the many casualties of Superstorm Sandy, which sent floodwaters surging through homes when it hit Oct. 29, damaging more than 2,000 homes and starting a fire that burned more than 100 houses to the ground. The beachfront village, whose population plummeted from 12,000 in the summer to around 4,000 the rest of the year, provided a way of life not often seen in the sprawling suburbs of most cities. Generations of the same family jealously guarded their modest homes, and they took care of their own.

Like so many other elderly residents there, Campbell could “age in place”, living alone after her husband died in 2009, despite a heart condition and the onset of what might be dementia. It’s a concept that many communities have embraced, and that groups like the AARP and the National Council of State Legislatures are encouraging.  When people age in place, they stay in their homes, perhaps adapting them for more limited mobility, rather than moving to elder care facilities. And it’s a way of life that seems to have just evolved naturally in Breezy Point.

“It’s not uncommon to have three generations living within blocks of each other. It did offer that kind of stability and smalltown closeness,”says Msgr. Michael Curran of St. Thomas More Catholic Church, the main church on Breezy Point’s main drag and one of the places residents sheltered during the height of the storm.

Campbell’s house on Reid Avenue was completely flooded when Sandy hit. “It was like the ocean meeting the bay in your living room,” says Pawlowicz.

The house, which Campbell's late husband, Charlie, built in 1990, is on the first road to the left as you enter Breezy Point. Shelves at her house, filled with carefully catalogued photo albums, were soaked when the floodwaters filled the home. Campbell lost almost everything but the small suitcase she took with her when she fled to Pawlowicz’s home to wait out the storm.

Courtesy of Ann Marie Pawlowicz

Kathleen Campbell rides her tricycle in Breezy Point, N.Y., on Sept. 27, 2012.

Campbell was once a fixture of the community as she rode up and down the narrow alleys on her tricycle. Now it sits rusting in her empty, mudstained house.

The Westchester hamlet of Hawthorne where Pawlowicz lives doesn’t have many level streets. Its Victorian, Craftsman and Care Cod homes are tiered one above another along streets built into a steep, rocky hillside.

“I miss riding my tricycle,” says Campbell in a soft Irish accent. “I was on it twice a day.”

Although Campbell is clearly enveloped in the loving arms of her family, her independence is gone. “She felt safe,” Pawlowicz says. “Even though she has a touch of memory issues.” She sleeps on the sofa because she is uncomfortable with stairs.

Within walking distance to many Breezy Point homes in the 500-acre cooperative were a bank, auto repair shop, the Blarney Castle pub and Deirdre Maeve's Supermarket and, perhaps most important for Campbell, St. Thomas More Church. Most remain damaged and closed months after the disaster.

Breezy Point had naturally what states like Georgia and New Jersey have been spending money to develop – safe, walkable neighborhoods with homes friendly to arthritic bodies.

A survey AARP did in 2008 of Americans over age 50 showed more than half would like to walk, bike or use public transportation, but nearly 40 percent complained about a lack of sidewalks and safe crossings, bicycle lanes or safe places to catch the bus near their homes.

'A hidden little gem'
At Breezy Point, three of Campbell's cousins and a neighbor used to regularly look in on her, making sure she ate her meals and keeping her company. Now they're all displaced too.

David Friedman / NBC News file

Veets Pawlowicz, second from right, is aided by a gang of family, friends and even volunteering strangers as they clean up his mother-in-law Kathleen Campbell's house on Nov. 2, 2012, in Breezy Point.

“I feel like a lot of the neighbors looked out for each other. It was a very simple life. It was great,” Pawlowicz adds as she sets a cup of tea in front of her mother. “It’s all gone now.”

Pawlowicz, 41 and the mother of two girls aged 8 and 16, finds herself a member of the “sandwich generation” – trying to juggle her job as a nurse with raising children and caring for an elderly parent. On weekends she and her husband, Witold, make the hour-long drive to Breezy Point to try to rip out drywall and salvage what belongings they can in Campbell’s home. It’s not clear what it will take to rebuild.

“We have pumped out the basement like 35 times. Whatever happened with this storm, it shifted everything. Now it’s like it’s on a spring,” Pawlowicz says. Getting insurance sorted out has been a chore for many Breezy Point owners.

“I haven’t been back to see it yet. Please, God, let’s get back there,” Campbell says.

“Not now, Mom,” Pawlowicz answers gently. “It’s a ghost town.”

The seaside neighborhoods in the Rockaways are among the last to recover from Sandy. Breezy Point is nowhere close to being back to normal. Empty foundations yawn open on the blocks that burned. Elsewhere, houses remain shifted off their foundations. There is still no electricity, so almost everyone clears out as the sun sets. Breezy Point is the last New York neighborhood left without clean water.

Like Campbell, many long to go back home. But for seniors, that will be especially hard, even with family support. “It is going to be tough for an elderly person living alone in a badly damaged home to get that home restored,” says New York’s health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Farley.

Curran tries to remain in touch with the seniors who are now scattered to new homes. They're resilient, he says, but "late in life it’s a big adjustment that folks are making.”

Just as they found their own solution when the community was whole, the elderly of Breezy Point have found their own solutions to being homeless. “Most people were able to find a family member or a friend they could move in with and have their needs met,” says Curran, who now commutes himself to attend to his duties at St. Thomas More.

Many families don’t want to talk publicly any more about their situations – a man who moved his elderly father to Dallas, a family who brought their aging parents to Long Island. “I was just talking to a couple – they took their parents in, they are safe,” says Curran. “But they are 85-plus and this is the first time they have ever lived in an apartment.”

Campbell misses the beach, but she doesn’t complain. “We’re on top of the hill,” she says, smiling as she gazes around her daughter’s antique-filled home. “It’s beautiful.” But she mentions again that she misses her tricycle.

“I always say everyone should have a touch of dementia during a disaster,” says Pawlowicz. “The best thing about dementia – my mother laughs. We have been able to cry a little bit, but nobody died.”

Related stories:

• Sandy-struck Breezy Point facing 'greatest historical challenge'
• Confusion in the storm: Alzheimer's patient refused to evacuate
• Elderly sisters find time to laugh after Sandy
• Temporary housing will never be the same post-Sandy

Hawaii may be paradise to many, but it's not cheap to live there for many seniors on fixed incomes.

The average older American living independently does not have the means to meet basic standards of living, according to a report published by Wider Opportunities for Women (WOW) and the Gerontology Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston. The report, “Seniors nationwide are nowhere near economic security,” calculates the average income for retirees for each state in the country, as well as their costs of living. While older Americans in some regions are faring better than in others, their costs exceed their income by at least $1,000 per year in every state.

Based on the report, 24/7 Wall St. identified the 10 states with the largest gap between the costs of living and the average elderly income, also known as the economic security gap. In these states, the average independent senior is short at least $6,000 each year. In the worst case, the difference between expenses and income is more than $10,000 annually.

While there are no areas of the country where the cost of living is affordable for seniors, the states in Northeast and Southeast have the biggest problems. According to WOW CEO and President Donna Adkinson, seniors have lower incomes in the Southeast while Northeast states are the most expensive.

Most of the states with the largest disparity between elderly income and expenses have higher costs for all residents and are either in the Northeast or the Pacific. While expenses in these regions are higher than the rest of the country, basic necessities such as health care, food, housing and transportation affect the elderly even more — usually must rely on Social Security, pensions and noncash benefits to cover their costs.

Rent and mortgage payments are the biggest of these expenses, and the states in the Northeast and West Coast have among the highest home costs. According to Adkinson, “Housing cost is the largest expense for elders, and many retirees with fixed or largely fixed incomes pay for housing in markets driven by workers who are earning incomes adjusted for locally high cost of living.”

Rising health care costs also act as a heavy burden for seniors in these states. Between 2006 and 2009, the price of drugs used by older Americans rose by 26 percent, according to a report published recently by AARP. With health care costs among their biggest expenses, this increase is particularly hard on seniors. According to the WOW report, the average senior in several states needs to spend more than $400 each month on medication. As evidence of the problem, five of the six states with the most expensive health care for the elderly also have the largest economic security gaps.

Some of the states with the biggest economic security gap for the elderly are in the Southeast, where residents have a lower median income. Four out of the 15 worst states, which include Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee, have only moderate costs of living. But because older residents in these states have less money, they cannot afford even these relatively low expenses.

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24/7 Wall St. identified the 10 states with the biggest difference between median income for independent senior citizens and the amount WOW’s Economic Security Database estimates they need to meet a basic standard of living in their state. To identify the biggest cost drivers for these elderly residents, 24/7 Wall St. used the Economic Security Database’s Elder Index to calculate expenses by state for a single, renting, independent person over 65.

These are the top five states where seniors cannot afford to live.

1. Massachusetts

• Elderly economic security gap: $10,248
• Median elder income: $16,800 (20th lowest)
• Annual cost of comfortable living for an elder: $27,048 (5th highest)
• Life expectancy in years: 80.1 (6th longest)
• Housing costs per month: $994 (6th highest)
• Health care costs per month: $440 (3rd highest)

The average, single, independent senior earns just $16,800 a year in Massachusetts, the 20th lowest amount in the country, according to WOW’s Elder Index. Meanwhile, the costs of living in the state for a retiree to live securely are $27,048 a year, the fifth-highest in the country. The resulting gap between income and expenses is over $10,000 annually — by far the largest in the country. In order to meet their basic needs, Massachusetts residents need to spend $440 each month on health care, $243 on food and nearly $1,000 on housing.

2. New York

• Elderly economic security gap: $9,244
• Median elder income: $17,000 (21st lowest)
• Annual cost of comfortable living for an elder: $26,244 (6th highest)
• Life expectancy in years: 80.4 (4th longest)
• Housing costs per month: $1,057 (4th highest)
• Health care costs per month: $370 (10th lowest)

A retired single New York resident makes $17,000 each year from pensions, Social Security and other sources of income, according to WOW’s Economic Security Database. This income, which is below the national average for the elderly, does not come close to the estimated $26,244 required annually if New York seniors were to live comfortably and with economic security. For retirees, health care costs are actually relatively low in the state. Transportation costs are just $210 per month. But the average single elder spends $12,684 per year on rent. The good news for New York retirees is that Fiserv projects home prices will fall in the state by 5.9 percent by the third quarter of 2012. While home prices will increase nationwide after that for several years, they will increase at just 1.8 percent annually in New York, slower than all but one state.

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3. Hawaii

• Elderly economic security gap: $8,904
• Median elder income: $20,700 (3rd highest)
• Annual cost of comfortable living for an elder: $29,604 (the highest)
• Life expectancy in years: 81.5 (the longest)
• Housing costs per month: $1,329 (the highest)
• Health care costs per month: $377 (12th lowest)

According to the latest census figures, 14.5 percent of Hawaii’s population is 65 and older, the eighth-highest proportion in the U.S. Life expectancy is 81.5 years, the longest in the country. According to MERIC’s cost of living index, expenses are higher in Hawaii than anywhere else in the country for every major category except health care, in which Hawaii’s is second. This high cost of living also affects Hawaii’s substantial elderly population. According to WOW’s economic security index, the annual cost of living for a single, renting retiree is just under $30,000 — the highest in the country. The biggest of these expenses is housing, which comes to $15,948 each year — by far the largest in the country.

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4. Connecticut

• Elderly economic security gap: $8,020
• Median elder income: $19,580 (7th highest)
• Annual cost of comfortable living for an elder: $27,600 (3rd highest)
• Life expectancy in years: 80.2 (5th longest)
• Housing costs per month: $1,004 (5th highest)
• Health care costs per month: $430 (6th highest)

Costs for all Connecticut residents, regardless of age, are in the top 10 for every measured category, including transportation, health care and utilities, according to MERIC’s cost of living report for Q4 2011. These costs are a heavy burden on the state’s retired citizens, as well. Connecticut’s seniors make $19,580 a year, the seventh-highest income in the country. However, the minimum income required to meet basic needs is $27,600, the third highest in the U.S., according to WOW’s Economic Security Database. The difference amounts to more than $8,000 each year.

5. New Jersey

• Elderly economic security gap: $7,960
• Median elder income: $20,000 (5th highest)
• Annual cost of comfortable living for an elder: $27,960 (2nd highest)
• Life expectancy in years: 79.7 (tied, 15th longest)
• Housing costs per month: $1,091 (2nd highest)
• Health care costs per month: $442 (2nd highest)

The average retiree’s income in New Jersey is $20,000, the fifth-highest in the U.S. Expenses, however, are even higher, according to WOW’s Economic Security Database. The average senior citizen renting an apartment spends nearly $1,100 per month on housing, and an additional $437 per month on health care. The combined annual costs of housing and health care come to $18,396. Fortunately for senior citizens living in the state, transportation costs are the lowest in the country, at just $202 per month.

See the next top five states where seniors cannot afford to live.