People who cannot afford to survive without this credit and need it to fill the wage expense gap for basic living needs. This is why the unemployment rate is a

People who cannot afford to survive without this credit and need it to fill the wage expense gap for basic living needs. This is why the unemployment rate is a poor metric. It doesn’t matter much if you have a job if its wages are insufficient for one to meet their basic needs on. Lots of employed folks, but folks barely treading water economically. A silver lining is that with immigration constrained for the foreseeable future, wages will be pushed up over time through structural demographics further tightening labor supply. https://www.marketplace.org/story/2026/08/11/credit-card-delinquencies-approach-great-recession-levels https://www.marketplace.org/story/2026/08/11/credit-card-del... https://www.marketplace.org/episode/2026/07/16/workers-are-barely-getting-ahead-in-this-economy https://www.marketplace.org/episode/2026/07/16/workers-are-b... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49294240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49294240 (citations) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49027462 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49027462 (citations) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47680794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47680794 (citations) TLDR Wages must go up, price levels will not come down.