Squeezed In The Middle (Class)

New data from the United Way finds almost half of American households don't earn enough to afford the basics of middle class living as the vast majority of jobs in the US pay less than $40k a year. Americans are employed, they just don't earn enough wages.

Nearly 51 million households don't earn enough to afford a monthly budget that includes housing, food, child care, health care, transportation and a cell phone, according to a studyreleased Thursday by the United Way ALICE Project. That's 43% of households in the United States.

The figure includes the 16.1 million households living in poverty, as well as the 34.7 million families that the United Way has dubbed ALICE -- Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. This group makes less than what's needed "to survive in the modern economy."

"Despite seemingly positive economic signs, the ALICE data shows that financial hardship is still a pervasive problem," said Stephanie Hoopes, the project's director.

California, New Mexico and Hawaii have the largest share of struggling families, at 49% each. North Dakota has the lowest at 32%.

Many of these folks are the nation's child care workers, home health aides, office assistants and store clerks, who work low-paying jobs and have little savings, the study noted. Some 66% of jobs in the US pay less than $20 an hour.

The study also drilled down to the county level.

For instance, in Seattle's King County, the annual household survival budget for a family of four (including one infant and one preschooler) in 2016 was nearly $85,000. This would require an hourly wage of $42.46. But in Washington State, only 14% of jobs pay more than $40 an hour.

That's why talk of a minimum wage is useless because nobody in America can afford to live on $7.25 an hour.  Living wages and guaranteed basic income are much more of a solution, and at least some Democrats are embracing those ideas, but not enough.  The middle class in the US is basically dying, and if you're black or Latino, the middle class is already dead.

"Economic anxiety" may be the catch-all to replace racism in the Trump Era, but it doesn't mean that people aren't suffering.