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Monday, July 30th, 2018

Almost 80% of US workers live from paycheck to paycheck. Here’s why

Author:     Robert Reich
Source:     The Guardian (U.K.)
Publication Date:     Sun 29 Jul 2018 06.00 EDT
 Link: Almost 80% of US workers live from paycheck to paycheck. Here’s why
Stephan:   All day while I have been working I listened to cable news and Republican congress people telling the world how wonderful the American economy is, and it made me increasingly irritated. It's true the economy is great if you are a large stockholder or a  top corporate executive. If you're an average working America the situation is quite otherwise, although almost no one will say it on these shows. Robert Reich will and, in this piece, he does. I agree with him, because this is the reality I see and my readers write me about.  

Workers protest for more money outside a McDonald’s in Miami, Florida.
Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty

The official rate of unemployment in America has plunged to a remarkably low 3.8%. The Federal Reserve forecasts that the unemployment rate will reach 3.5% by the end of the year.

But the official rate hides more troubling realities: legions of college grads overqualified for their jobs, a growing number of contract workers with no job security, and an army of part-time workers desperate for full-time jobs. Almost 80% of Americans say they live from paycheck to paycheck, many not knowing how big their next one will be.

Blanketing all of this are stagnant wages and vanishing job benefits. The typical American worker now earns around $44,500 a year, not much more than what the typical worker earned in 40 years ago, adjusted for inflation. Although the US economy continues to grow, most of the gains have been going to a relatively few […]

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1 Comment

  1. Teresa Bright on Monday, July 30, 2018 at 8:32 am

    the next great recession/depression will likely be worse than 2007 and closer to 1929. Hold on…. I always thought that 2007 would act like a reset button, and that people would learn lessons. Apparently we haven’t learned enough….