Poll: Savings shrivel for lower-income workers
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Families with lower incomes are seeing their financial cushions eroded as we get further away from pandemic-era government support.
Driving the news: About 40% of adults earning less than $50,000 per year said in January that their savings wouldn't cover one month of expenses — that's up from 32% who said so last month, and 28% the month before.
Why it matters: The growing financial vulnerability among lower earners is one aspect of widening inequality between income groups in the U.S., as measured by the Morning Consult/Axios Inequality Index.
How it works: The index measures whether economic inequality is rising or declining — as opposed to providing a snapshot of the distribution of income or wealth.
- The headline index ticked up in December, indicating that inequality widened, for the third month in a row.
The bottom line: Economic hardships presented by rapid inflation and the Omicron variant have been experienced differently across income groups.
- For lower-income Americans, price increases have outpaced wage gains in most industries.
- Coupled with the removal of many government support programs, and savings drawdowns around the holidays, this led to a deterioration of household balance sheets among the most vulnerable, says John Leer, Morning Consult chief economist.
