The capitalist economic crisis unfolding today is bearing down hardest on working-class families. High prices for basic necessities, including groceries, rent, electricity, medical care, child care, care for the elderly and more make it difficult to make ends meet.
Under this class-divided system, huge wealth flows into the pockets of the ruling capitalist families and upper-middle-class layers that advance and rationalize the ruling class’s dog-eat-dog profit system.
“$1 Trillion of Wealth Was Created for the 19 Richest U.S. Households Last Year,” a recent Wall Street Journal headline boasted, noting the wealthiest 1% of households now own 31% of the wealth produced by the labor of working people.
The fact of the matter is the rich are getting richer. That’s how capitalism works, with working people having to confront a much different reality. Real wages continue to fall behind the rising cost of living. In response, workers are increasingly turning to the unions to fight back, organizing strikes and other protests, like those today at Boeing, Republic Services and by airline flight attendants both in the U.S. and Canada.
“Inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings rose 0.1% in July after zero in June,” the Aug. 15 Journal said, reflecting the squeeze workers face. Real average hourly earnings rose by just 1.2% over the last year.
One place that hits working-class families the most is the astronomical cost of raising children. “We are dealing with a broken system where minimum wage does not come close to covering living expenses for a family,” Christie Finch, deputy director of Mothers & Babies, a group that provides diapers and other supplies to families, told the Journal. “Many families are choosing between paying the rent and buying groceries or paying for heat.” In many cases, women are choosing to put off having children, or not have them.
Declining U.S. birthrate
Births in the U.S. have been declining for decades. In 2024 the fertility rate dropped to the lowest level since the government began tracking it in the 1930s, with less than 1.6 births per woman, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. For the population to at least hold steady would require a birth rate of 2.1 children per woman, a rate that was last achieved in 2007. In fact, the rate has seldom been that high since the early 1970s.
This is in sharp contrast to the “baby boom” years following World War II. Women in the U.S. averaged more than three births each from the late 1940s through early 1960s.
And one thing to remember in considering this crisis is the shift over decades — in the imperialist countries, especially in the U.S. — in the transformation of the family. Up until the 1950s most families were sustained by one parent working. Both because of advances won by women fighting for equal rights and the growing crisis of the capitalist system, large numbers of women poured into the labor market and industrial jobs. And today both parents have to work.
It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars for working-class families to raise a child today. The median annual cost of bringing up a child in the U.S., reports MarketWatch, is now $22,850.
The cost for providing child care is sky-high. According to the Department of Labor, parents spend over 25% of their income paying for child care. It costs more to send a child full-time to day care than it does to pay for in-state tuition at a public college.
To send one child to day care for five years — infant care, two years of toddler care and two years of preschool — costs an average of $44,000 across the U.S. But in some areas, like San Francisco and Washington, D.C., it’s way more, above $125,000.
This money doesn’t go to child care workers. Their average pay last year was just $15.41 per hour, the Labor Department says, not enough to cover the most basic standard of living. And they face difficult working conditions from the shortage of workers to provide adequate attention to the children. Working women whose children are in day care face special challenges in keeping a job. “Every month, at least 1.2 million workers have to miss work or are working only part time because of child care issues,” the Journal notes.