12 Economically Insecure Americans on What Keeps Them Up at Night

As politicians panic about inflation and the national debt, the people they represent have more immediate concerns on their minds. Their grocery stores are running out of chicken. Their electrical bills are tripling month over month. And they sometimes have to trek clear across town, 45 minutes, just to find a pack of toilet paper they can afford.

In a new focus group by Times Opinion, we set out to capture the day-to-day realities of people experiencing economic insecurity — people who, more often than not, live in a state of constant fear: a mother anxious that her young family has outgrown their two-bedroom apartment; a senior citizen, forced into retirement, watching her savings dwindle away; a woman on food stamps in Detroit, spending her evenings in a darkened living room, willing herself not to turn on the lights for fear of running up the utilities bill.

No focus group is meant to be conclusive. The 12 people who participated in this one were Democrats and independents, and some are wealthier than others, but each shared similar insecurities — not only about their own finances, but about the future of a world in which billionaires send “rockets out to space” while people “stand in soup lines for hours just to get a meal.” (Times Opinion is holding other focus groups featuring Republican voters.)

The conversation — moderated by a veteran focus group leader, Margie Omero, and condensed for clarity — lets us see the psychological cost of economic insecurity. Poverty warps the way we see the world: Every broken promise from a politician, or frustrating experience with a government agency, reinforces the feeling that we live in a system designed to thwart those who need its help the most. Our 12 participants also talked about hope and resilience, and the result is a quintessentially American mosaic that captures the everyday contradictions of life in a transformative era when millions of people remain stuck in place: confidence in capitalism, but anger at inequality; exasperation at cultural depictions of poverty, but trust that their neighbors understand their struggles; and always, the crippling fear about what the next month may bring.

Margie Omero: You’re all from different parts of the country. Just fill-in-the-blank for me: I feel “blank” about how the economy is going in my area. I feel “blank.”

Phyllis (52, white, from California, risk assessment interviewer, makes between $30,000 and $50,000): Scared.

Jennifer (28, Latino, Texas, part-time teacher assistant, makes between $20,000 and $30,000): Sad.

Rob (50, Latino, Illinois, unemployed but looking for work, makes less than $20,000): Ripped off.

Justin (35, white, Virginia, actor, makes between $30,000 and $50,000): Annoyed.

Margie Omero: Does anybody have a positive word?

Mary (68, white, Massachusetts, retired, makes between $50,000 and $75,000): Hopeful. I’m hopeful.

Margie Omero: Tony, how about you?

Tony (62, white, Arizona, business owner, makes between $30,000 and $50,000): I run a business out of my home. I do antique restoration and antique work. When I order stuff, it takes forever to get it. Customers, they’re really, really shy about doing business right now because of the Covid.

Jenny (49, white, Tennessee, licensed psychotherapist, makes between $50,000 and $75,000): I’m in Nashville, and it’s growing like crazy. We have tons of folks moving from California, Illinois, New York, places like that. It’s driving our housing market through the roof. And groceries are getting expensive. Some shelves are empty. And I hear that we’re not the only city.

Margie Omero: Let me ask this differently now. What about for you personally?

Bekira (53, Black, Michigan, not working and not looking for work, makes between $30,000 and $50,000): I’m on a fixed income. I’ve been like that for 15 years. And the only way I’m going to get out of that is to go back to work. But the day the pandemic started roaring up, I had two job interviews, one for the post office and one with another company to get fingerprinted, but slowly but surely they were shutting the city down and then the state. Two years later, the only thing that I had was those $1,400 checks.

Sammie (68, Black, Nevada, retired, makes between $30,000 and $50,000): I drove gasoline tankers for 40 years. And my wife’s a retired nurse. We left Chicago going on three years ago now and came here, to Las Vegas. My wife got a job in two different places here as a nurse. And all of a sudden, she had a massive stroke. I’m taking care of her. I can’t go out and make money, like driving trucks again, because I got to be home with her. So I got to look for other means of making money.

Justin: I’ve been an actor for over 20 years. I’ve never had a recurring paycheck. I’m currently back with my parents. I’ve become one of those stereotypical millennials who just leeches off their parents. I’m not really happy about that. But I probably am privileged in my situation right now.

Jennifer: I lost my job like a year ago. I have three kids. And the smallest one, she just turned 1. Everything’s getting expensive. Diapers. Food. They eat a lot of food. Right now I’m staying in a two-bedroom apartment. I was looking into buying a house at the beginning of 2020, and then everything happened and people were outbidding us. I don’t have a lot of money to be putting on a higher price for a house.

Mary: I retired in March of 2020. And then I collected unemployment. I got severance. And I found a job working for an expert witness. It was very lucrative. $70 an hour. But all of it kind of fizzled. My salary went to zero. Luckily, I’m on Social Security, living off of what little savings I had. So yeah, I’m just anxious when I see all the bills coming in and the balance in my checking account going down. I haven’t had this worry for so many years. I did raise my daughter for 32 years on my own. So I mean, I had times where I didn’t have any money, but things got better, and now they’ve gone backwards. And at 68, it’s a tough time to be worrying about money.

12 Economically Insecure Americans on What Keeps Them Up at Night

Margie Omero: Let me ask this question because I heard a couple of people refer to it. Have there been folks here who have lost a job, who have gone on unemployment?

Hannah (25, white, New York, student, makes between $75,000 and $100,000): I reduced my hours. It was mostly because of burnout.

Bekira: I want to go to work but I’m scared of catching Covid, because I’ve known three people that died. If I die, my son is going to have to pay for that. He ain’t got no money to bury me. I don’t want to take that chance.

Margie Omero: Sometimes when I do these groups people say, “people are just walking out of their jobs and saying, I quit, and companies are having a hard time filling those positions. There are help wanted signs everywhere.” What do you guys think about that? Is that your experience?

Mary: I’ve put myself out there and said I’d like part-time remote work. And I get probably 20, 30 offers at full-time and at very little pay.

Hannah: I think people have realized that companies should be paying more and treating their employees better. At least a lot of people that I kind of talk to, their mentality, is, well, at this point, we should have a job that actually appreciates you.

Margie Omero: Is that part of what happened to you when you said I need to reduce my hours because of burnout?

Hannah: Yeah, a lot of nonprofits have the same mentality: you’re working for this cause, so you should be able to take lower pay and work crazy hours, because you’re such a good person. And then the C.E.O.s making 10 times your salary. And then just the long hours with little pay was really what did it.

Jenny: I’ve been self-employed as a psychotherapist, and I’m kind of burnt out at the end of this Covid. Not the end of Covid — we’re still going on. But I’m looking to go back into corporate America, into H.R. leadership-type roles. It’s taking longer than I thought. Corporations are taking longer to hire because they’re wanting to be more particular, or they’re scared because of the great resignation.

Margie Omero: I want to pause for a minute and ask about prices. How many people say that that’s on their minds, the cost of things going up?

Mary: I used to shop for what I wanted. Now I shop for what I need.

Rob: I go clear on the other town just to get toilet paper. I mean, clear — a 45-minute train ride just to get toilet paper.

Margie Omero: Sammie, you were nodding along about groceries getting more expensive.

Sammie: Yeah. Steaks. You might as well say “rich folks’ food” now. I mean, even chicken is just totally ridiculous. You go shopping, you see $98 up there, and you get home and see what you got, it’s like you don’t have nothing.

Phyllis: Can’t tell you the last time there was chicken breasts available when I’ve gone to the grocery store.

Angel (49, white, Missouri, self-described homemaker, makes less than $20,000): Here it was chicken wings. I’ve been looking for them since November.

Phyllis: The gas and electric just went through the roof here in San Diego. I thought we had a triple bill. It wasn’t a triple bill. Water’s next. It’s nuts. And they’re coming after the people that have done solar in California. You can’t win.

Bekira: My light and gas bill is like $130 a month. And I’m like, it’s just me here. I stay in a living room with all the lights cut off.

Margie Omero: What do you think is behind that? Why is that happening?

Mark (46, Asian or Pacific Islander, Washington, part-time teacher, makes less than $20,000): We have Rite Aids where I live. Over the holidays, so many shelves were just closed, empty. They didn’t have what they needed. It’s just the bottleneck, like ships and containers not getting where they need to be.

Tony: Everybody is raising prices. Like me, myself, being a business, I go out and I purchase products, and some of the products I buy, I’m paying double and triple for. For me to make an honest living, I have to charge my customer more. It’s a domino effect.

Margie Omero: Does anybody have a different point of view?

Bekira: I think a lot of companies were actually giving away stuff to help their communities — food and toilet paper and masks. Now they got to recoup that money somehow.

Hannah: The larger corporations, they have the money, I think, to absorb some of those market ebbs and flows, but they’re putting that on to the consumer.

Rob: I took my partner to a hotel last month, and we had to save up for a couple of months to go there. And we signed up for having a late checkout, $18. Well, when I got the final bill, I not only gave $75 for incidentals, but then they charged me $75 for a late checkout. That’s crazy.

Angel: There’s always corporations that are going to take advantage of a situation.

Justin: I actually feel like I’ve seen the opposite, personally. There are two examples I can think of. For instance, Kraft, Philadelphia Cream Cheese had a promotion over Christmas saying if you don’t make a cheesecake, we will send you $20 to buy a different dessert. And Domino’s is right now doing a promotion where if you go pick up the pizza yourself as opposed to having them deliver it to you, they’ll give you credit toward more pizza.

Margie Omero: Where do you think you’ll be in a year or two years? If we did this group again, do you think the challenges you’ve been talking about would be different?

Hannah: I think it depends on the political situation.

Phyllis: Every year we hope it’s better and that hasn’t been happening.

Bekira: Yeah, in two years, I think, my situation is probably going to be the same as it was before Covid. Getting my check, paying my rent, feeding my cats, my son borrowing money. But as far as the country is concerned, every day, something’s happening on the news. Now there’s going to be a war over Ukraine. I just feel sad for the country, really.

Jenny: Everything feels so unpredictable. It’s like ever since March of 2020, I don’t feel certain of anything anymore.

Margie Omero: So it’s not just economic.

Jenny: It’s economics, politics, relationships. I’m single. I date, and seems like we’re dating different, even. How we treat each other is different. What we prioritize these days is different.

Laura Reston: What do you think other people don’t get about your economic situation?

Bekira: People probably look at me as though I’m lazy, I’m content collecting the check and food stamps. When, in actuality, I’ve been working since I was 13 years old and going to school at the same time. That’s why my student loan debt is so high. And they get a misconception because I’m in Detroit, because I collect SSI and food stamps, that once again I’m not trying hard enough to get out there and up my income.

Tony: A lot of the people, a lot of the friends and family that I know, they pretty much do understand. I think the big problem is the government. The government doesn’t see people like us — what we’re going through.

Phyllis: People are more empathetic and sympathetic.

Hannah: Everyday people, like my friends and family, but not politicians.

Margie Omero: OK, let’s talk about the federal government. Do folks have examples of something the federal government is doing to address some of these things that people have been talking about?

Mary: I have student parent loans, over $40,000. My daughter has over $165,000. And we have received information saying that they are trying to either lessen them, lower the interest, or actually get rid of some of the balance. That’s the only thing I see the government doing.

Phyllis: I feel like there’s a lot of talk and no action. ‘Oh, we’re going to do this, we’re going to do that, we’re going to help you this way, we’re going to help you that way.’ I just feel like they’re dangling this carrot in front of you, but they’re not letting anybody grab that carrot and eat it.

Laura Reston: Phyllis, you said we hear a lot of talk and no action. This is for everyone: Tell me about a recent time you heard a Democrat who you feel really got it when talking about the economy, who really understood the challenges we’ve been discussing. Is there someone who comes to mind? And if so, what did they say?

Phyllis: Nope.

Mary: Elizabeth Warren can be very down to Earth.

Hannah: Stacey Abrams.

Angel: Bernie.

Bekira: I feel that Joe Biden tricked us. He was saying all the right things. Again, with the student loan, but then his focus became about the Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid.

Mary: Well, I mean, people are dying. By the millions.

Bekira: I lost three people. So I know. But life goes on for the rest of us still here. What’s going to happen once the Covid is settled? He needs to get back to business. My hope was the student loan situation. That’s what got me. And then now it’s like he lied about it.

Justin: I think he meant it. It just hasn’t been able to happen yet.

Laura Reston: So if there was one thing that each of you could ask the Democrats to fix for you or change for you — it can be a small thing. Something that would make your life easier day to day.

Jenny: The first thing that came to mind was, if we could have a fixed gas price. It’s a fantasy I have.

Margie Omero: Would that do it?

Jenny: I don’t know, but I like to fantasize that it would. And if I went to this gas station in this neighborhood, it’s the same price. And if I went to the next state, it’s the same price because gas costs this. Period.

Phyllis: I’m up on that cloud with you.

Justin: I’m afraid to say it. I’m afraid I’ll open up a can of worms, but having a vaccine mandate would help a lot more than it would hurt. We would see the economy getting back to normal.

Bekira: We vaccinate our babies, don’t we? They get their shot, and we cry when they cry. We don’t question what’s in it, right?

Mary: Because we trust science.

Justin: People being vaccinated would solve a lot of problems. Maybe it’s over-simplicity, but I think it’s one of those common sense things that people just aren’t getting for some reason.

Bekira: Because it’s a way to buck the government. Again, we microwave our food, we smoke weed, cigarettes, have unprotected sex, vaccinate our babies, but now we don’t want a shot.

Mary: It gets me crazy.

Margie Omero: OK. So imagine you’re in charge of the economy. You’re the boss. You could decide it. What would it look like?

Phyllis: The cost of living would go down for everybody.

Bekira: Your rental or your housing costs would be a reflection of your monthly wage. The cost of higher learning, as well.

Margie Omero: How many people have had to pay student loans?

Five people — Jenny, Bekira, Mark, Hanna, and Mary — raise their hands

Margie Omero: OK. Tony, how about you? You could design the economy.

Tony: Make it a little more fair between, say, a person that’s only getting $20,000 a year versus a person that’s making $100,000 a year.

Mary: How about a million? And never paying taxes. They are sending rockets out to space, when people are living on the street in every city in this country.

Margie Omero: So let me ask this question. What will the economy be like 10 years from now?

Tony: Compared to when I was a child, it’s just gotten progressively worse and worse and worse, and I think it will continue to get worse.

Hannah: I say the same. It’s hard to know, because it depends on what political parties are in charge over the next 10 years — and if the Earth is still standing. That’s also up in the air.

Margie Omero: So what would need to happen?

Angel: We need a woman president.

Mary: And we need a Senate that talks to each other and agrees and believes in the Constitution.

Mark: The change that needs to happen, it’s systemic. Just changing our party is not going to change it.

Jenny: I think lobby reform. If lobbyists didn’t have so much power over how our representatives voted for us, I think they could get back to voting for us.

Tony: Our voice needs to be heard.

Margie Omero: Do you feel like your voice is heard now?

Tony: No. And that’s the part that really irritates me. All my life, since I was 16 years old, I’ve been on my own and made my own way and paid taxes all my life, and it’s like, what do they keep doing with the taxes? You keep hearing about Social Security is going to go broke. Well, that’s money that we contributed in, and that was supposed to be for us when we retire. But they keep taking it, taking it and spending it any way they want. Do they come ask us? That money belongs to us, not to them. And here in Phoenix, Arizona, we’ve got more people on the street living out of cardboard boxes, having to stand in soup lines for hours just to get a meal.

Bekira: We haven’t talked about the drug crisis in this country. I’ve been clean for 16 years now. It starts when you’re young, sipping that first beer at the parties with your family, hitting cigarettes you stole out your mama’s purse, all that stuff builds your character. That’s why I didn’t finish college, and I owe student loans, and all this money. I can’t blame everything on the economy. I have to take some responsibility for what I did with my life. And until we do that and get a handle on that, then we’re going to be sitting here 10 years later talking about “woe is me,” the economy still messed up because the government is not giving us this and that.

Tony: I really don’t think politicians know what it’s like to not know where they’re going to get their next meal from, how they’re going to pay their next bill. I got an electric bill last month for $165. This month, my electric bill, $235. I didn’t change nothing. A lot of it doesn’t make any sense. I get $1,100 a month Social Security. My house payment is $1,450. That’s not counting all my other bills. I have to work 12, 16 hours a day, seven days a week to be able to just survive.

Mary: If the government contributed more toward school, college, the cost of school and the cost of health insurance, I think the economy would improve immensely. I mean, my daughter lives in Europe, and their taxes are higher, but their roadways are perfect. Her fiancé never paid one penny from kindergarten through college, and she has free health. They do pay like $50 a month, but she gets everything for free. And the government pays for that. They see where their taxes go. We don’t see where our taxes really go.

This 90-minute discussion, part of Times Opinion’s America in Focus series, was held over Zoom. The participants were selected by the moderator, Margie Omero, with guidance from Times Opinion. (Times Opinion paid her for the work; she does similar work for political candidates, parties and special interest groups.) The participants provided their ages, race or ethnicity, job background and income levels. As is customary with focus groups, their last names are not included.

Laura Reston is a senior staff editor in Opinion.

Adrian J. Rivera, an editorial assistant in Opinion, contributed to this article.

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