The American worker is not receiving the wages they deserve and when legislators look at the information and honest assessment of the cost of living in the USA, they will find the wage labor needs to be strengthen. No American wants to live on subsidies, they want their hard earned paycheck to mean something.
May 21, 2018
By Nicole Leonard
...“It is morally unacceptable and economically unsustainable for our country to have so many hardworking families living paycheck to paycheck,” John Franklin, president of the project and CEO of United Way of Northern New Jersey, said in a statement. “We are all paying a price when ALICE families can’t pay the bills.”...
More state residents (click here) struggle to afford basic expenses such as housing, food, transportation and health care, according to new national data, indicating life in New Jersey is becoming less affordable for many people.
United Way’s ALICE Project, a grassroots initiative that collects and analyzes data to study the magnitude of financial hardship in America, released new data Thursday showing more than 1.3 million households in New Jersey in 2016 lived below the ALICE — Asset Limited, Income Constrained Employed — threshold, including those under the federal poverty level....
...While New Jersey’s rate of households below the poverty line and ALICE thresholds — 41 percent of all state households, up from 37 percent in 2014 — falls in the middle of all states, rates vary greatly among counties....
New Jersey in 2018 has counties with good incomes and some with poor performance for household income. This state is a clear illustration why ALICE is provided on a county and municipal breakdown.
...Nearly two-thirds of all households in Cumberland County live below either the federal poverty level or the ALICE threshold, which was calculated to be about $64,000 for a family of four in 2014. It was the highest rate in the state in 2016, data show.
Meanwhile, only 27 percent of households were below poverty or ALICE income ranges in Hunterdon County.
Project analysts said ALICE households often contain working residents whose income is above the federal poverty level — and therefore they do not qualify for many federal and state assistance programs — but they do not make enough money to afford basic needs out of pocket....
