This Associated Press story is an example of misleading reporting. I'll bet most of what it says is technically accurate. That is, technically accurate but highly misleading.
I'm thinking of two middle aged guys I know, both in IT. Each has been laid off in recent years, drew unemployment, possibly applied for food stamps, the whole nine yards. Then each found his next job which, like his last job, paid in excess of $100K a year.
In the study on which AP was reporting, they would have been among the nearly 80% who had experienced "poverty" at some point in their lives. In other words, the study is conflating two different things to produce a misleading whole.
One of those things is that employment is less life-long than formerly. Firms have little loyalty to employees, and thus people are laid off when no longer needed.
They often take months, perhaps more than a year, to find their next job. By the same token, people have less loyalty to employers and will, in good times, leave one employer for another. Laid off individuals appear in the sample as people who have experienced poverty during their working lives, albeit briefly.
The sample also contains people who have difficulty finding work at all, and are paid less-than-living-wage when working. They also experience poverty during much, perhaps most, of their working lives.
These are two very different groups, one of which makes very good money when employed, and is employed most of their productive years. The other group is only intermittently employed and is poor during much of their lives. Lump them together and you get a spurious "80%" combining, as we say, apples and oranges, two things which should not be lumped together.
One group will arguably need government assistance during much of their lives, the other might conceivably do without it entirely and rely on their savings during their periods of unemployment.
