Vermont’s shrinking middle class
JEFFERSONVILLE — Kim Martin began with the good side of her and her husband, Chip, losing their jobs: 2-year-old Olive Martin, who sat in her lap in their Jeffersonville duplex, bright blue eyes, a cascade of unruly blonde hair, and a wide grin of tiny, pearly teeth.
Kim Martin was laid off from her position as an art teacher at Essex High School just before Olive was born in 2009, so now she has more time to spend with her youngest daughter than she was able to with Olive’s sisters, Violette, 7, and Saige, 5.
“The world works in mysterious ways,” Kim Martin, 37, said. “There’s reasons why we’re put in challenging positions, so that we rise to the occasion and overcome those challenges. There’s always a silver lining, and Olive is certainly one of those linings for me. I’ve gotten to be more engaged in her development the last two years. It’s been fun.”
What hasn’t been fun for Chip and Kim Martin, both of whom were born and raised in Vermont, has been figuring out how to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. Chip Martin, 38, was laid off from Symquest in South Burlington at the end of April.
When they had a dual income, the Martins made about $50,000 annually — solidly in the middle class. Now they have become part of a growing number of Chittenden County-area residents who are struggling to remain in the middle class in the face of a continuing bad economy.
Shrinking more rapidly
A recent analysis by USA Today of the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey for 2006 to 2010 shows that in greater Burlington — a metro area of about 211,000 people — the middle class is shrinking faster than nearly anywhere else in the country.
Here, the middle class’ share of total income earned decreased 3.9 percent, from 51.6 percent to 47.7 percent, during that four-year period.
Burlington’s middle class still is earning a greater percentage of total income than the national average of 46.3 percent, but its share is decreasing nearly 10 times faster.
Jane Kolodinsky, chairperson of community development and applied economics at the University of Vermont and director of the Center for Rural Studies, said the decline of the middle class is something for everyone to worry about.
“Our country was built on the growth of the middle class,” Kolodinsky said. “The middle class really means you are beginning to have more disposable income, not living at a subsistence level. If you think about what drives our current economy, it’s people’s ability to buy goods and services in the marketplace. With the loss of disposable income which comes with a declining middle class, you have begun to put kinks in the economic engine we all rely on.”
Ironically, Kolodinsky said, as large American corporations continue to outsource labor to China and elsewhere, the customers they need in this country to buy goods and services “no longer have the employment and income necessary to keep that engine running.”
“My fear as someone who studies this and studies well-being of citizens in society is with the loss of the middle class, well-being in the United States is going to continue to decline,” Kolodinsky said.
‘Wall Street-generated recession’
Some 46 million Americans are now considered poor, the highest number on record, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said last week in an interview with the Burlington Free Press.
“The reason that the middle class is collapsing has a lot to do, of course, with the loss of millions and millions of jobs taking place because of the Wall Street-generated recession we’re in right now,” Sanders said. “They’re going to drop out of the middle class and into the ranks of the poor.
“Then you have other people still working, but parttime when they want to work fulltime,” Sanders said. “Others are working fulltime but have seen a decline in their wages. All of that adds up to a significant decline in the American middle class and a significant increase in poverty.”
Searching, not finding
The Martins bought a duplex after they moved back to Vermont from New York City in 2002, and now, between rent from a tenant and Chip Martin’s unemployment benefits of $375 per week, they’re able to cover the monthly mortgage payment of $1,400.
For now.
“I’ve been looking for work, a middle-type position,” Chip Martin said. “I can’t go to Burger King and flip burgers and pay for a family of five. One of the main things that changed our game up was Kim’s being cut as a teacher. She had just got going in the teaching world. It changed our dual-income aspect of things.”
Michael Moser, research project specialist with the Center for Rural Studies, said he has seen many more indicators of the squeeze on the middle class in greater Burlington, in addition to a declining share of total income:
• a decline in median household income from $58,331 in 2006 to $54,738 in 2010.
• an increase in households with cash public assistance income from 3.2 percent in 2006 to 5.9 percent in 2010.
• and an increase in households with food stamp benefits in the past 12 months from 7.8 percent in 2006 to 12.5 percent in 2010.
“There’s a lot of different indicators,” Moser said. “Household size is increasing; younger demographics are living in their parents’ homes at greater rates.”
Working, and in need
Rob Meehan, director of the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf in Burlington, cited anecdotal evidence of a decline in the middle class. It comes in the form of prospective clients who have never set foot in his facility on North Winooski Avenue before.
“You see working families receiving emergency food help more than ever. That’s definitely a trend,” Meehan said.
In 2007, when Meehan started at the Food Shelf, it was feeding about 10,000 people annually. Today that number has grown nearly 20 percent, to 11,400 last fiscal year, and headed toward 12,000 this year.
“You’ve got people with children who are going to bed without enough food to eat,” Meehan said. “It’s almost inconceivable, but that’s actually happening. We’re doing our best to make sure it doesn’t.”
Meehan said he’s seeing people who once were donors to the Food Shelf who have become recipients. Others need the help but can’t bring themselves to take it.
“I’ll have people come in — say, out-of-work construction workers — and ask, ‘How does it work?’” Meehan said. “When I tell them, they’ll say, ‘OK, thanks,’ and sneak out. They won’t even get food. Our goal here is to try to get people food who need it, but we’re not always able to do that because of the stigma associated with it.
“Are there more people eligible than are coming to get the food?” he added. “We don’t know, but I think that’s a huge population.”
‘Uncompromising position’
Kim Martin has a photography business that was never intended to support the family — just to provide for the “extras” such as vacations and college education — but is doing well enough now to help with the budget. She said she’s grateful for the services Vermont provides, particularly Dr. Dynasaur, which ensures that her three girls have health care.
But as her husband applies for positions that have at least 80 other applicants on average, and as winter looms with its colder temperatures and fuel bills, she worries.
“I get really frustrated with the situation we’re put in because we’re hard workers, and we want to work — that’s never been in question,” she said. “I really feel like we’ve been put in an uncompromising position, and that’s difficult. It doesn’t let up. There’s no break in our life as it is right now.”
Contact Dan D’Ambrosio at 660-1841 or . Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bfp_biz.
