More Americans say they can't pay their bills. Here are the states where it's worst.
CBSN
A growing number of Americans say they are struggling to pay their bills, battered by inflation and the loss of federal pandemic aid.
About 36% of consumers say it has been "somewhat" to "very difficult" for them to pay their usual bills in the last seven days, according to the Census Bureau's most recent Household Pulse survey, which gathered responses during the first two weeks of February. That represents a 25% increase compared with a year earlier, and is higher than even in the early months of the pandemic, when households were buoyed by expanded unemployment aid and stimulus checks.
The health of the American consumer is key to the U.S. economy, which relies on consumer spending for 70 cents of every $1 in economic activity. Increasingly, however, there are signs that more households are reaching a breaking point, weighed down by grocery prices that have jumped 20% in two years and rents that have surged 13%.
Out of air and pinned by an alligator to the bottom of the Cooper River in South Carolina, Will Georgitis decided his only chance to survive might be to lose his arm. The alligator had fixed its jaws around Georgitis' arm and after he tried to escape by stabbing it with the screwdriver he uses to pry fossilized shark teeth off the riverbed, the gator shook the diver and dragged him 50 feet down, Georgitis told The Post and Courier.