A sharp rise in U.S. poverty

This article has it all. Note that it's not based on "official" U.S. poverty figures, which are grounded in obsolete metrics.

The facts and numbers from numerous sources reflect the reality of deprivation in America, and help to confirm what has been called the “sharpest rise in the U.S. poverty rate since the 1960s.”

The Washington Post summarizes: “According to Nielsen data, the American Payroll Association, CareerBuilder and the National Endowment for Financial Education, somewhere between 50 percent and 78 percent of employees earn just enough money to pay their bills each month….[this was] before the coronavirus pandemic….[since then] the number of first-time unemployment claims has exceeded 1 million per week, an unprecedented number in U.S. history.”

There’s much more evidence of Americans in trouble. An NPR review states that “survey after survey for years has found that most people in the U.S. live paycheck to paycheck.” One of these is a survey reported by CNBC, which concluded that “63 percent of Americans have been living paycheck to paycheck since Covid hit.” Both Schwab’s 2020 Modern Wealth Survey and a recent Harris Poll found that a sizable majority of Americans are suffering financial stress during the pandemic. The American Psychological Association concurs. In Bankrate’s latest polling numbers, 6 out of 10 Americans would be unable to afford an unexpected $1,000 expense. - Nation of Change