Despite wage gains, lower-income families have been hit hard by inflation and the expiration of pandemic-era benefits.

More faced hardship in the United States last year, the Census Bureau said, as inflation and the end of subsidies outweighed higher incomes.

The number of Americans living in poverty has gone up, even as incomes rose last year, the U.S. Census Bureau announced Tuesday. Measuring poverty can be tricky − but the main number social scientists have for years looked at to capture the true number of people struggling to meet their basic needs ticked up to 12.

U.S. inflation-adjusted household income increased but poverty rates showed only modest changes last year, the U.S. Census Bureau reported on Tuesday, offering a mixed snapshot of how American households fared as the economy returned to pre-coronavirus pandemic growth levels,