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Lede: With many millions of workers and their families feeling economic pressure, how many are really in economic distress? Doug Cunningham takes a look.

By Doug Cunningham

Most Americans are feeling the economic squeeze of higher prices and stagnating or falling wages. Add a bank meltdown ot that and you have families living in real distress. Professor Michael Zweig of the Center for Study of Working Class Life at the State University of New York the official poverty rate doesn’t begin to tell the real story.

[Zweig]: “According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the only measure of economic distress that they have is the poverty level. That’s what they count. That’s what they measure. And by official government poverty standards the poverty rate is around 12.2 percent, 12.3 percent. What we have found is that if you look at a broader understanding of economic distress, it’s around 21 percent of the households in the United States. Almost double.”

Profesor Zweig says millions of working families are having a terrible time making ends meet, even though they don’t officially qualify as being poor.