US Census figures reported last year that 14.3% of Americans lived below the poverty level of $10,956.00 per year for a single adult and $21,954 for a family of four. California had an even higher rate during the last study rising to 15.3% of state residents.

San Diegans fared a little better in that only 13.1% of San Diego County’s residents were counted as poor.

However, today the Census figures were revised under a more accurate formula, overall poverty in 2009 stood at 15.7%, representing about 47.8 million people. When compared to the past September 2010 Census reports that’s an increase of 4.2 million poor people around the country. Not too hard to understand that the poverty level for San Diego was undercounted as well.

In San Diego, a 2010 study by the Center on Policy Initiatives, reported that since California is more expensive to live in than other states that the poverty figures were misstated in the Census. For example, a single San Diegan needs $27,733 to live comfortably in the County and a family of four needs $45,985 to be self-sufficient. So given the Census figures of last year, a single adult living in San Diego needs more than $16,777 above the national $10,956 amount to live at self-sufficiency levels and a family of four in the County needs more than $24,031 above the family average of $21,954 to live successfully in sunny San Diego.

All the bright and sunny economic forecasts at the end of the year seem to predict a rosier picture for the County’s economy. However, breaking down the economic factors for the sunnier predictions eliminates how miniscule increases in sales, housing construction, and other activities are going to impact the poor. What is not forecast in these predictions is how jobs are going to be created in sufficient numbers to hire all the people displaced in this county from the Great Recession. Those who seriously want to work who now fall under the poverty level will not be able to find employment that will help get them out of the hole.

The long-term unemployed who will soon fall into the 99er category in 2011 will only add to the numbers of people living below the poverty level this year. Predictions of future poverty levels by the US Census look pretty bleak.

Just consider yourself lucky if your one of the poor in San Diego. If you lived in Ethiopia your annual income would average $90.00 a year, that’s right folks 25 cents a day…now that’s poverty at the extreme. I know, you don’t live in Ethiopia do you?

“The other America, the America of poverty, is hidden today in a way that it never was before. Its millions are socially invisible to the rest of us.”

The Other America: Poverty in the United States(1962)