MICHIGAN — The number of low-income working families continues to grow, with nearly a third of all working families in the United States now struggling to earn enough money to meet basic needs, a new report by the Working Poor Families Project shows.

In Michigan, the data found there were 308,000 low-income working families in 2011, representing 32 percent of the total 966,000 working families, up from 27 percent in 2007. The state ranks 26th in the nation in the percent of low-income working families. 

“Despite certain economic indicators showing that the economy is slowly improving, there are still more than 300,000 low-income working families here in Michigan who are not feeling any economic uptick,” said Gilda Jacobs, president and CEO, Michigan League for Public Policy. 

“Our state is one of ten across the country where the share of low-income working families has increased by more than 5 percent since 2007. Clearly, more legislative action is needed to ensure that Michigan’s vulnerable populations have access to the programs and educational opportunities that will allow them to get ahead – which will better allow our state to get ahead.” 

Nationally, the number of low-income working families – sometimes called the working poor – increased by 200,000 to 10.4 million in 2011 over the prior year, according to the WPFP analysis of new Census Bureau data. Those 10.4 million families constitute 32 percent of all working families – up from 28 percent in 2007 – and represent 47.5 million Americans.  

At the same time, nationally the economic gap between high-income and low-income working families continues to widen. In 2011, the top 20 percent of working families earned 10.1 times the total income earned by the bottom 20 percent, up from 9.5 times in 2007. Stated another way, the top 20 percent took home 48 percent of all income while those in the bottom 20 percent received less than 5 percent of the economic pie.