Title. With the pandemic, shit has gone very, very bad for a lot of people in the USA. As in, not enough food kind of poor. No rent kind of poor. No electricity and water kind of poor.
There's what I want to know : is there a site that gives a more accurate figure than the absolutely ridiculous 10% from the official numbers ? Some fucking neolib institutes give the insane number of 3 fucking percents, and these are all over the google results. How can someone calculate/find the real, actual poverty rate ? While it's relatively easier to find actual unemployment figures, poverty seems to be far harder to get.
In fact, from unemployment alone, you'd get like 25% of the population, and the quantity of people working several jobs has increased drastically the last years, putting them above the 12k poverty line. That number is roughly 13.5% of the population from what I have seen, so even with the official unemployment numbers, you get 25% of the population. Some numbers indicate two thirds of Americans wouldn't be able to pay for a 500$ expense, so really, I don't know if the real poverty rate isn't around 40 to 50%, if not more ?
I don't have an answer, but I also have bad news lol.
You have to be careful with those unemployment figures, because they are politicized as well, and gamed through control of their definitions. I watched a Hedges video a while ago where it came up in the conversation, but I'm still looking for it. They play games with it like: If you are unemployed for x amount of time, they stop counting you, that sort of thing.
Yea, and the ones who simply give up on looking for a job altogether and won't bother applying for it. Shit is fucked.