A bigger paycheck should mean more margin in the budget. For families living in poverty, career progression can be disincentivized when increases in compensation do not offset the value of the lost government benefits.

Nearly 1 in 5 Memphians, that’s 250,000 people in the Memphis metro area, lack consistent access to enough food to live a healthy life.

People in Tennessee earning less than $15,000 annually deal with chronic health conditions at nearly twice the rates of those earning $50,000 or more.

Unreliable transportation limits access to employment and training opportunities and public transit alone will not be able to bridge these transportation gaps to equitable access to living-wage jobs.

At least 55% of working parents in Shelby County have experienced employment challenges due to inadequate childcare. Many leave the workforce because the cost of childcare outweighs their income or because childcare is simply unavailable due to travel distances or the shift they work.

More than half the adults in Shelby County have experienced at least one traumatic experience in their childhood, with over 110,000 having experienced four or more.

In Memphis, few resources exist to help people experiencing poverty identify their professional strengths and match those strengths with the living-wage jobs that value them most. As a result, tens of thousands of people are pursuing misaligned employment pathways resulting in low retention rates.

People living in poverty must often navigate unwieldy and inefficient systems to access workforce development services. While these programs are designed to help lift people out of poverty, they are often not located close to populations experiencing poverty.

It’s hard to imagine choosing between groceries or textbooks, enrollment fees, or the gas to get to class. For students experiencing poverty, the lack of resources and support allows seemingly insignificant factors to derail the completion of career and technical education programs.