Failing Jobs, Falling Wages in NC

Half of all North Carolina's families with minor children earn too little to meet their basic needs, according to a new report from the North Carolina Budget & Tax Center.

The study, a biennial project of the Budget & Tax Center, calculates a basic budget or living income standard (LIS) for two common family types -- a parent with one child and two parents with two children -- found in each of North Carolina's 100 counties. By using actual cost data for food, housing, health care, child care, transportation, taxes and miscellaneous expenses, the LIS offers a more precise measure of financial hardship than provided by the federal poverty level.

The LIS report found that, on average, a family with children would need to earn 231 percent of the federal poverty level to meet its basic needs. This translates into an hourly wage of $12.32 -- an amount 2.4 times greater than the current minimum wage of $5.15.

The study also found that hard work alone is not a ticket to financial security. Roughly 46 percent of families with a child and at least one working adult fell below the LIS. In terms of individual demographic groups, majorities of North Carolina's children, African Americans and Hispanics, along with almost half of its women, lived in families with incomes below the LIS.

According to the report's authors, this development is not simply the result of the last economic downturn. Rather, it is the result of a decades-long decline in real wages, a shift from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based one, and a shifting of tax burdens from the affluent to those least able to pay.