Despite an annual income of just $26,328, Chuck Falkler is hanging in there as one of the
47 percent. A few years back when his mother and stepfather uprooted to the Cape Haze area, Chuck, with his freshly minted high school degree and 18 night school community college credits, figured he would follow. Nothing to lose, he reckoned.

He had spent the past two years or so banging around from one minimum wage job to another in arctic upstate New York. With the nation in the grip of recession, he reckoned Florida would be more of the same — minus the frostbite. After months of looking, he eventually landed a job at a lube joint out on the main drag. The pay wasn’t spectacular, but he was finally out of the minimum wage hole. After two months of mind-numbing eight-hour days working the oil change assembly line, however, Chuck began to look to the future. He couldn’t see one.