Sixty-two percent of Americans currently live paycheck-to-paycheck, including 48% of high-income earners, a new report from PYMNTS and LendingClub revealed.
The report noted that although inflation is lower than in July, consumers are still facing rising costs:
Inflation has made life more and more expensive, and consumers have already made moves to cope, such as pulling back on discretionary expenses. But one can only pull back so far on spending, and PYMNTS’ data reveals that consumers are finding another way to navigate their lower purchasing power.
People are looking for additional work
The report indicated that for some people, "supplemental income will continue to gain importance moving forward" and noted that a quarter of consumers have an additional job to make ends meet. In addition, 17% obtain supplementary income in other ways.
Some 55% percent of respondents reported their supplemental income grew as a share of their total income over the last 90 days…. The report noted 39 percent of those who lived paycheck to paycheck “with issues paying their bills” mentioned “extraordinary expenses” as their reason for seeking side work.
A February press release from LendingClub indicated that in January, 60% of Americans were living paycheck-to-paycheck (down 2% from today). The note also referred to data on credit card debt, detailing that the average consumer with this type of debt owes 35% of their savings.
However, this figure varied among different consumer groups. On average, those who live paycheck-to-paycheck and have trouble paying their bills have credit card debt that exceeds their available savings by more than 50%.
The survey polled 4,125 U.S. consumers from Feb. 7-23 and also took into account economic data from other sources.
