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Number of poor hit record 46 million in 2010
By David Morgan
WASHINGTON | Tue Sep 13, 2011 12:36pm EDT

(Reuters) - The number of Americans living below the poverty line rose to a record 46 million last year, the government said on Tuesday, underscoring the challenges facing President Barack Obama and Congress as they try to tackle high unemployment and a moribund economy.

The Census Bureau's annual report on income, poverty and health insurance coverage said the national poverty rate climbed for a third consecutive year to 15.1 percent in 2010 as the economy struggled to recover from the recession that began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009.

That marked a 0.8 percent increase from 2009, when there were 43.6 million Americans living in poverty.

The number of poor Americans in 2010 was the largest in the 52 years that the Census Bureau has been publishing poverty estimates, the report said, while the poverty rate was the highest since 1993..................>>>>.................................>>>>...................http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/13/us-usa-economy-poverty-idUSTRE78C3YV20110913

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The Irish Times - Thursday, September 15, 2011
Hard times in the US

LAST YEAR Chrysler advertised for new workers in Detroit at $10 an hour, half the rate of its old production line staff, and a couple of dollars above a poverty line wage. The company froze the list after 10,000 applied. Now tens of thousands work alongside their better-paid workmates in Chrysler, GM, and Ford plants under agreements sanctioning two-tier workplaces signed between the Big Three and the once powerful United Automobile Workers (UAW).

The union controversially bought into the companies’ case that this was the only way in a global economy to remain competitive, and now counts 4,000 “yellow pack” workers among its 112,000 members.

Such desperate demand for low-paid jobs is eloquent testimony to the remorselessly impoverishing effect of growing levels of want in the US, not just on the country’s workless poor but among once-affluent industrial workers. With the decline in union power, it is also a taste of the future. And what happens in the US...

A Democrat may be in the White House, but last year the number of those living below the official poverty line in the US rose by 2.6 million to 46.2 million, the worst in 52 years, and the fourth consecutive year to see a rise. For middle-class families, Tuesday’s census report on poverty also reflected a grim reality: median household incomes, those of families located exactly half way up the income scale (on €36,000), fell last year to levels last seen in 1997, 7 per cent down on the peak of 1999. It was what the New York Times called a “lost decade”,

Fifteen per cent of the US population, and 22 per cent of its children, now live below the poverty line – for a family of four, a measly €16,300 – the highest level since 1993. Minorities have been hardest hit - black poverty rose from 25 to 27 per cent.

The figures reflect the continuing effects of the crisis in the financial system and weak recovery from recession that has left 14 million out of work. And they are unlikely to improve in 2011, not least because President Obama’s new limited jobs initiative has been given short shrift by Republicans. The Brookings Institution estimates that the current crisis will eventually push a further 10 million into the ranks of the poor............................>>>>....................>>>>...................http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2011/0915/1224304143385.html

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LAST YEAR Chrysler advertised for new workers in Detroit at $10 an hour, half the rate of its old production line staff, and a couple of dollars above a poverty line wage. The company froze the list after 10,000 applied. Now tens of thousands work alongside their better-paid workmates in Chrysler, GM, and Ford plants under agreements sanctioning two-tier workplaces signed between the Big Three and the once powerful United Automobile Workers (UAW).