Rising prices are the latest financial blow to low-income Americans
CNN
Prices are climbing all over the place as the economy is reopening. But for lower-income earners — who were already hit hardest by the pandemic — the sudden price spikes are squeezing their budgets even further.
When necessities get more expensive, consumers with less disposable income, who already spend a bigger share of their money on essentials, feel it first. In 2016, researchers from the Hamilton Project, part of the Brookings Institution, found that low-income households spend a higher percentage of their budgets on basic needs — housing, food, transportation, health care and clothing — than they did three decades ago. The pandemic has exacerbated America's inequality problem, and lower-income workers have been disproportionately affected by economic hardship over the past year. Many of the millions of jobs lost to Covid-19 shutdowns were in sectors that typically pay lower wages, such as hospitality. And even though that industry is recovering, in April it was still short 2.8 million jobs compared with February 2020.
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