It’s true 14,5 millions of americans earn less than $2000 a year?

14 comments

1. I assume those are not full-time workers.

2. The only people I can think of that earn that little are children or people with significant other sources of income.

3. Are they even the same people from one year to another? A previously unemployed person who gets a job in December will have a really low income that year.

4. Not everyone works full time.

   Lots of college students and early retirees that don’t work or work limited hours.

   Also, you have the disabled, unemployed, stay at home parents, homeless and those that get unexpectedly injured.

   Not to mention those that work in the black market and incomes are under reported.

   You also have a small percentage of deadbeats.

   14.5 million is less than 10% of the workforce.

5. People in that position aren’t in the normal workforce.

   * College students who aren’t working while they’re going to school.
   * The disabled.
   * Stay-at-home mothers/housewives.
   * The homeless.
   * People who work jobs that pay “under the table” with no documentation (it’s not legal, but it’s fairly common at the lowest rungs of the workforce to pay cash daily for manual labor).
   * Teenagers who aren’t working a job while in high school.

   That table included everyone from the age of 15 and up. Under most child labor laws in the US, 15 is the absolute youngest someone can normally work (except on a family farm), but most 15 through 17 year olds probably aren’t working, or at most have a low-wage part-time job for some extra spending money while in school.

6. Yup! And it absolutely *sucks*. Need a new pair of shoes? Good luck because that money could be used towards food (EBT/SNAP/Food Stamps only covers so much, especially if you need a specialized diet). Want to go out with friends/SO? Good luck with doing anything with $5 USD in your account. This then just perpetuates poverty, and the ability to break out of living and relaying on supplemental government supports. You can’t save anything. You can’t buy anything. You can’t afford basic necessities either without help. Edit: why are people downvoting this? Y’all really don’t like poor people?

7. One factor is that the Earned Income Tax Credit (essentially a cash lump sum) that the federal govt and many states offer requires that you show some minimal level of income for the year to qualify. Where I live there is an entire nonprofit/local government system of people whose job is to help you do that. So many people who would otherwise not be in the official labor force end up filing taxes on a small amount of income in order to get this payment.

8. Annual taxable income ≠ annual budget from living off savings or having expenses covered by other means. So yes, millions of Americans have less than $2k taxable income per year, but a lot of those included in that count are very far from living a lifestyle that would be considered in poverty.

   Edit: minimum wage is an hourly rate, you can make well below the expected annual income of a full time minimum wage worker while working part time for well above minimum wage or not working at all.

9. Welfare and EITC from working one week a year allows them to live “comfortably”

10. My 16 year old son had a part time job in the summer making $15 an hour. Since he worked 3 days a week for 6 hours a day, that earned him about 2k over the summer.

11. Does this count all the money these people make living off the government?

12. also children dont work

13. Teenagers working afterschool/summer jobs

14. I’m in that bracket. My husband makes $250k per year. I don’t need to work.