COVID’s financial toll: 38 million Americans are now worse off

The coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc on the economy: the United States has 8.4 million fewer jobs than it had in February 2020, just before COVID-19 struck.

While most Americans have weathered the coronavirus pandemic financially, about 38 million say they are worse off now than before the outbreak began in the United States. Overall, 55 percent of Americans say their financial circumstances are about the same now as a year ago, and 30 percent say their finances have improved, according to a new poll from Impact Genome and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. But 15 percent of respondents say they are worse off. The problem is more pronounced at lower income levels: 29 percent of Americans living below the federal poverty line say their personal finances worsened in the past year. Roughly that many also find themselves in a deepening financial hole, saying they struggled to pay bills in the past three months.