Nearly 9 of 10 Low-Wage Workers Fear They Can’t Make Ends Meet

story here http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/nearly_9_of_10_low-wage_workers_fear_they_cant_make_ends_meet

"The poll, by The Washington Post and the University of Virginia's Miller Center, casts into sharp relief the everyday anxieties of the working poor, and argues that the sense of unease has become something of a permanent condition among people struggling to make ends meet. From the Post:

Job insecurities have always been higher among low-income Americans, but they typically rose and fell across all levels of the income ladder. Today, workers at the bottom have drifted away, occupying their own island of in­security.

Fifty-four percent of workers making $35,000 or less now worry "a lot" about losing their jobs, compared with 37 percent of ­lower-income workers in 1992 and an identical number in 1975, according to surveys by Time magazine, CNN and Yankelovich, a market research firm. Intense worry is far lower, 29 percent, among workers with incomes between $35,000 and $75,000, and it drops to 17 percent among those with incomes above that level.

Lower-paid workers also worry far more about making ends meet. Fully 85 percent of them fear that their families' income will not be enough to meet expenses, up 25 points from a 1971 survey asking an identical question. Thirty-two percent say they worry all the time about meeting expenses, a number that has almost tripled since the 1970s.

The mood even transcends our fractious politics. The Post reports that "once you control for economic and demographic factors, there is no partisan divide. There's no racial divide, either, and no gender gap. It also doesn't matter where you live."

The Post framed the poll story around the daily life of John Stewart, 55, who makes $5.25 an hour plus occasional tips wheeling elderly passengers through a Philadelphia-area airport. Stewart has worked low-wage jobs since the 1970s, when the economy was strong and diverse enough to offer a place for a worker with a high school education and few skills. "In the years back then,'' Stewart told the Post, "if you left a job, you were able to find another job, within the next day or the same week.""