Real economics: Jobs

The decline in the official poverty rate last year from 15.0 percent to 14.5 percent is especially welcome because it follows a decade and a half of mostly rising or stagnant poverty rates. Before 2013, the official poverty rate fell only once since 2000. Still, at the current rate of progress — which was hampered in 2013 by slow job growth and austerity policies — poverty won’t return to its pre-recession level of 12.5 percent until about 2017.

While poverty and median income improved last year for families with children,poverty rates reached record highs for childless families and individuals. The poverty rate for individuals not living in families (people living alone or only with non-relatives) rose to 23.3 percent in 2013, the highest in over 30 years. The poverty rate for childless families (childless couples, older couples or other families whose children have moved away or turned 18, and other relatives who live together), while much lower at 6.2 percent, was also the highest in over three decades.

Greg Kaufmann, Moyers & Company

• People in the US experiencing poverty by age 65: Roughly half
• Jobs in the US paying less than $34,000 a year: 50 percent
• Jobs in the US paying below the poverty line for a family of four, less than $23,000 annually: 25 percent
• Poverty-level wages, 2011: 28 percent of workers
• Number of homeless children in US public schools: 1,168,354

Greg Kaufmann, Moyers & Company - Families receiving cash assistance, 1996: 68 for every 100 families living in poverty. . .Families receiving cash assistance, 2011: 27 for every 100 families living in poverty

Global Research - The percentage of children in poverty hit 23 percent in 2012, up sharply from 16 percent in 2000. Some states are much worse. For almost the entire American South, the share of children in poverty is higher than 25 percent.

Black News - One in four Americans now live in poverty areas, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The number of people who have been forced to move to poverty areas has greatly increased in the past 14 years.

47 states have poverty rates above pre-recession
The rate of poverty level wages for men has increased. Those between 25 and 44 have seen precipitous increases in the share working at such low wages, with the share more than doubling between 1979 and 2013.

Economic Collapse Blog: Today, approximately 20 percent of all children in the United States are living in poverty. A higher percentage of children is living in poverty in America today than was the case back in 1975.

Ten years ago, the number of women in the U.S. that had jobs outnumbered the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps by more than a 2 to 1 margin. But now the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps actually exceeds the number of women that have jobs.