This is what we mean when we say the middle class is being destroyed. One out of five Americans with a bank account had credit problems in 2007-09. You can guess the reasons -- unemployment or shrunken income.
Below are the kinds of problems they're dealing with, according to a consumer lending survey by the Deloitte accounting firm:
These are scary, scary numbers. They suggest that millions of working families are struggling to survive on wages that are at or near poverty level.
For these families -- and for many of us -- the recession is far from over. Friday's frightening unemployment numbers made that clear. Here's a chart from the New York Times that shows the abysmal rate of job creation during this "recovery," compared to the others in the past 30 years.
