Equal Pay Still Years Away for Florida Women: "Cultural Shift Needed"
Posted March 1, 2017 05:30 am | Public News Service
TALLAHASSEE, FL – While some sectors of Florida's economy are thriving, new data shows the number of people who are struggling to afford the basics of food, housing, transportation, child care and health care is on the rise.
The ALICE
Report - which stands for Asset Limited, Income
Constrained, Employed - aims to spotlight the working
poor; those who have jobs but have little or no savings
and are one emergency away from falling into poverty.
Lars Gilberts, statewide ALICE director with United Way
of Florida, said 45 percent of families in the state now
meet that criteria.
"This impacts our education, our health care system, our jobs, our credit, our ability to grow our home sector. Our community is based on growth, and yet we have a growing part of the population that really can't contribute as much as they would like," Gilberts said.
While the federal poverty level is set at $24,250 a year regardless of location, the ALICE report calculates a bare-bones survival budget for each of the state's 67 counties. For Miami-Dade County, that amount for a family of four is $56,753.
As the legislative session is about to begin, Gilberts
said he hopes the report will help push both political
and business leaders past rhetoric or campaign slogans
and into deeper discussions about what the state really
needs to move forward.
"While we need jobs, because jobs keep people out of
poverty, we need better jobs, we need more diverse jobs,
jobs that have opportunities to grow and advance," he
said, "and we need full-time jobs with benefits."
While the percentage of Florida households that meet the
ALICE threshold did not change much since the 2014
report, growth in the state's population means the the
number of working-poor households has increased from 2.6
million to 3.3 million.
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