Nearly half of Maine households struggle to cover their basic expenses, according to a new report about affordability in the United States.

The “States of Affordability” report released last week by the Brookings Institution estimates the cost of living in every U.S. county by bundling housing, food, childcare, healthcare, transportation and other necessities by household type.

It found that 54.2% of Maine households earn enough to meet their basic needs. That’s roughly in line with the national average, according to Brookings, a nonpartisan public policy nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.

In nearly every year since 2014, more than 40% of American households struggled to make ends meet, according to the report, which includes data from 2024.

Allina Diaz, organizing director at Maine Equal Justice, which works to increase economic security in the state, said she was not surprised by the data highlighted in the report. Many low-income Mainers have struggled for years to get by, but the report shows that more families with multiple incomes are now experiencing the same thing, she said.

The creep of the affordability crisis into the middle class is an indicator “that our systems are making it so people can’t get by,” Diaz said.

The analysis found that nearly 38 million more households could make ends meet if wages increased by $10 an hour. An additional 10 million could make ends meet if costs declined by $500 per month, according to the report.

Here are four takeaways from the report:

Nearly half of Maine households are unable to cover costs.

Over the past decade, 45% to 50% of households across the U.S. have struggled to cover basic costs, according to the report.

In Maine, 45.8% of households couldn’t cover those costs in 2024. Nationwide, 45.5% of households did not earn enough to make ends meet that year.

Diaz said that kind of economic instability is bringing “a new level of stress” to households in Maine, including among people who participate in advocacy work with Maine Equal Justice. Many have to make difficult choices every day between buying food, paying for childcare or covering utility bills.

“People really need help,” she said. “It’s unsustainable for many, many Mainers to live this way.”

Households making ends meet declined after the pandemic.

The share of households making ends meet declined by 10 percentage points after the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Brookings.

While the gap between income and cost of living has been a persistent challenge across the country for the past decade, there was some relief for households during the pandemic recovery. The report found that federal stimulus checks and expanded tax credits in 2021 and 2022 provided significant, but temporary, boosts to incomes.

In 2022, about 35% of Mainers were unable to make ends meet, according to the report. That rose to over 45% in 2024.

The end of those policies, coupled with rising costs, drove the amount households make sharply downward, according to Brookings.

Single adults with children struggle more than other households.

The Brookings report showed that only 30% of single adults with one to four children are able to cover their needs, compared with half of all households with two adults and children.

Of single adults with no children, 43.8% can afford their basic needs, according to the report.

Affordability challenges fall hardest on people of color.

Just 34% of Black households and 40.3% of Hispanic or Latino households in Maine earned enough to cover everyday costs, according to the report.

Nationally, 55% of households of color could not afford to make ends meet, highlighting income and wage gaps that persist by race and ethnicity, according to Brookings. In Maine, among all people of color, 47.2% earn enough to make ends meet, according to the report.

Black and Latino or Hispanic workers in the U.S. make 78 cents for every dollar made by white workers, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics median earnings data.