“It’s always one step forward, two steps back.”
Paula Gardner’s series of articles in MLive about Michigan’s working families struck us when they were first published in 2018. “"‘It’s just left us behind,’ Michigan couple wonders what happened to the middle class,” especially, made an impression. Gardner works to understand how one Michigan couple in particular, who probably have a story shared by at least someone in your family, work hard, earn above-average, and yet struggle to feel financially stable.
[Jennifer] and her husband's income come from two jobs - hers, a 30-year job close to home; his from a commute to Novi. Jennifer's pay stagnated after taking a promotion at Kroger to manage an in-store Starbucks. Ian is hoping for a promotion soon, after three years on the job cleaning ductwork. Both work as many six-day weeks as possible to boost their take-home pay.
Yet Jennifer looks at her income, her time on the job and her frugal lifestyle, and expresses a range of emotion. She's grateful for what she has, including strong benefits through her union at Kroger. She's optimistic that more hard work will keep her home afloat. She understands how some of her choices affect her today. And she grapples with expressing anger, disappointment and puzzlement.
"I don't even think of myself as middle class," she said. "... We are absolutely 'working poor,' and we are literally two missed paychecks away from bankruptcy."
She didn't expect to struggle this much.
They don't go to movies. They don't go to concerts. They don't drive new cars; they don't eat out, unless they cut corners somewhere. A treat is a walk with the dogs or a visit with Jennifer's mom. The numbers stay the same.
When she considers the rest of the state, that's when the puzzlement kicks in. Statistically, they're doing better than half of the households in Michigan, where the median household income, which includes single people who live alone, is closer to $52,000.
She sees the unemployment rate hover around 4 percent. She's watching home values rise, hitting an average of 17 percent across Michigan in 2017.
But, like Greg Pitoniak, she recognizes the gap between those gains and what workers see in their paychecks.
"As we've come out of the recession into a full recovery, the wage growth has not kept up with economic growth," said Pitoniak, CEO of Southeast Michigan Community Alliance.
He adds: "It's almost a baffling situation."
Other experts point to national wage data going back to the 1970s that, when adjusted for inflation, shows that average hourly wages went up 0.2 percent from the 1970s through 2017. The distribution of income gains shows that lower-wage workers may even have seen payroll declines.
"I feel the economy has really bounced back," Jennifer said. "You see it in Detroit. I can't believe the changes in Detroit in the last year. But I feel it has sort of left the good, hardworking people of Michigan ...," she pauses.
"It's just left us behind."