In a rural Maine county, residents say gas, groceries and heating bills are dampening their holiday cheer
“I’m not going to lie,” she said during a recent shift at the store. “It’s so stressful trying to keep everything at home trying to balance your bills and everything in here.”
A dichotomy is unfolding around the US, including Aroostook County, a picturesque but long economically challenging timber and potato-harvesting region along the Canadian border, where the median household income was $41,000 per year pre-pandemic. , was above the census data show. More recently, jobs have risen, consumer demand is rising and roadside signs sign bonuses as the economy recovers. Yet many workers and small-business owners say they are dismayed by inflation, which hit a 39-year high in November, and with the still-disruptive effects of the pandemic.
Ms. Holmes said she spends more than $60 to fill her 2011 Ford Explorer, up from about $40 a year ago—though petrol prices have been falling lately. She said her twice-monthly grocery bill increased from $300 to about $500.
Stress drives him to work. She said she had to shut down early the second day when no other worker could shift after being exposed to Covid-19. And he described encountering customers who are angry about high prices, like a man who recently ordered chicken tenders, angry that they had jumped from $5.49 to $8.99, she said. .
Marc Perrault, owner of One Stop Tulsa, said his own costs for the chicken are “through the roof.”
While nearly two-thirds of the largest U.S. public companies have achieved higher profit margins as industry executives raise prices on consumers, most Americans say inflation is causing them at least some financial stress, according to a recent Vol. The Street Journal survey found. Amid high demand and a lack of supply, the Labor Department said on Friday that November consumer prices were 6.8% higher than a year ago.
Another One Stop employee, 50-year-old cashier and deli worker David Day, said he and his wife had gone to a nearby Subway sandwich shop the night before, looked at the prices and walked out.
“We walked right out of the parking lot. We can’t afford it,” he said.
Winter heating costs are also expected to be higher than in recent years. Across the country, natural gas prices — used by nearly half of American households to heat space and water — have fallen since the October spike, but are almost 50% higher than a year ago. Maine leads the country in the share of homes relying on heating oil, which averaged $3.16 a gallon in November, up nearly 64% from last year.
Federal pandemic rental aid continues to support the finances of many homes, as are loose guidelines for low-income fuel assistance that provide partial assistance with bills. But some people are either unaware or unwilling to come forward to help, and many others may earn too much to qualify.
This includes the family of Chelsea Johnson of Presque Isle, the largest city in Aristook County. She celebrated in October after starting a new job at a child-protection service, making $21 an hour versus $27 previously. The 33-year-old said Congress’s expansion of the child tax credit also helps she and her husband, who work for the state’s drug-enforcement agency.
Yet his budget is tight, with groceries now costing upwards of $200 a week, compared to $120 to $150 a year ago. According to the Maine Public Utilities Commission, electricity bills in his area are about to rise by about 30% in January. To save oil, the couple use the space heater in their 19-month-old son’s room at night, and Ms Johnson wears a warm blanket around the house.
“There’s really no extra money anywhere,” she said.
Ms Johnson said her main stress is that recently her son’s daycare has sent him home twice for 10 days after coming into close contact with someone with COVID-19. He has to navigate his new job from time to time and miss out on personal training. “I feel a little insecure with my employment,” she said.
Phil Cyr, whose family owns two area nursing homes, says he believes barriers to childcare and early retirement during the pandemic are making it harder to fill jobs. A sign outside the family’s Prisque Isle Rehab and Nursing Center told of a “$10,000 sign-on bonus” for certified nursing assistants and others. Mr. Cyre later raised it to $15,000.
“I’ve been on it since 1976, and we’ve never seen it before,” he said, “but then we didn’t even have a Covid pandemic before.”
Maine’s COVID-19 surge began late this summer, inspired by the highly contagious Delta variant. Janet Mills on Wednesday activated the National Guard to help amid new records for the number of Covid-19 patients on hospitalizations, intensive care beds and ventilators, according to the governor’s office.
Data show, about 64% of Arostuk County’s population is fully vaccinated, compared to the state’s rate of about 74%. The county has recently been a Covid-19 hot spot, with Maine’s recent rate of confirmed cases per 10,000 people.
Aroostook County Action Program, a non-profit social-services agency, is seeing more and more people struggling with interconnected economic and health crises.
“People are just tired,” said agency head Jason Parent. “Every time you try to get life back to normal, something else hits.”
Another ACAP official, Sherry Locke, said families who are above the poverty line or even middle class are reaching for the first time, “whether because of rising prices, child care that has been put off or in Some are sick and can’t go back to work,” she said.
In early December, Stockings and Lights celebrated One Stop Tulsa, thanks to a tightrope crew of workers who said they recently went to the dollar store to pick up decorations to brighten the mood. One employee said she was feeling optimistic and was planning to apply for a higher-paying job at a nearby nursing home.
But their conversation also reflected gloomy times. Cashier Renee Fancher, 36, said that after being exposed to Covid-19, she had to enlist her father to look after her daughter that morning.
The manager, Ms. Holmes, told another employee that a regular customer, a man aged 30 who worked at a nearby French-fry factory, had died of COVID-19 the night before.
“I’m not in the Christmas spirit this year,” said Ms. Holmes.
