Middle-income Americans are continuing to feel financial strain and say their income is being outpaced by the rising cost of living, according to a new nonprobability-based analysis by Primerica.
The financial services firm released the latest edition of the Primerica U.S. Middle-Income Financial Security Monitor quarterly survey on Thursday, which showed that 68% of middle-income Americans said their income is falling behind the cost of living – a figure that has remained steady in the last two years.
The analysis found that 49% of middle-income American families said their primary financial goal for the year ahead was to simply keep up with rising costs, signaling that they're not anticipating any near-term relief.
Primerica CEO Glenn J. Williams told FOX Business in an interview that, "As you might expect after a number of years of this pressure, the attitudes of middle-income families have kind of leveled out – they're not getting worse, but they certainly haven't turned and aren't getting significantly better yet."
"Many of them are in a deficit position, they've either used savings or credit cards to fill the gap," Williams added, noting that even when cost of living pressures start to ease and with wages overtaking price increases, they won't feel the benefit right away due to credit card debt or the need to rebuild savings.