A new report being released Wednesday from United Way Colorado and Ent Credit Union shows 37% of residents statewide and 34% in El Paso County are not earning enough to cover basic expenses such as housing, health care, transportation, food, child care and a rudimentary smartphone plan.

Nearly 870,000 households out of about 2.4 million statewide were studied, more than two-thirds of which contain wage earners working in retail, food service, grocery, education, health care, law enforcement, firefighting, lodging, cleaning and other sectors.

A national research organization and grassroots movement that United Way of Northern New Jersey started as United for ALICE, which is an acronym for “Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed,” developed the report: “ALICE in Colorado: A Study of Financial Hardship.”

The mismatch between low-paying jobs and the cost of survival is reflected in the fact that many Colorado adults are working multiple jobs to cover their bills, according to the report.

“When you look at how much a family needs to make hourly to meet the minimum survival budget, it’s higher than most of our working families are making,” said Elizabeth Quevedo, senior vice president of community impact for Pikes Peak United Way.

For example, an El Paso County household with two adults and two children needs to earn $79,392 a year to afford a “household survival budget,” the report concludes. That equates to a combined or solo hourly wage of $39.70.

And a single adult with no children in El Paso County needs to make $15.22 an hour for $30,444 annually to meet a survival budget.

As of Jan. 1, the minimum wage in Colorado increased to $14.81 per hour for non-tipped employees and $11.79 per hour for tipped employees.

A few jurisdictions, including the city and county of Denver, the city and county of Boulder, and the city of Edgewater, have minimum wages higher than the state’s.

One of the primary takeaways is that many Colorado residents who would qualify for public assistance, such as food stamps, aren’t necessarily using them, said Cami Bremer, president and CEO of Pikes Peak United Way.

“That tells us we can do a better job of getting those that qualify for benefits — like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — enrolled,” she said.

There’s also a gap between residents who “make a little too much to qualify for benefits, yet they’re not at all in a stable relationship to reach a survival rate, much less a stability rate,” Bremer said.

Of the state’s 37% of households that aren’t meeting the income threshold for survival, just 9% rank at or below the federal poverty level, and 28% are working households that don’t qualify for government subsidies.

Yet, “they are still struggling to meet the thresholds it takes to stabilize a household,” Bremer said.

“I think there is a rising awareness of the fact that the cost of living is outpacing our ability to pay the wages families need to remain stable here,” Quevedo said.

This is the first time for Colorado’s 11 United Way offices and Ent as a major sponsor to collectively fund generation of the ALICE report; 30 other states and the District of Columbia have commissioned the report in previous years.

The Colorado report uses data from 2022 that “moves beyond traditional poverty measures,” according to United for ALICE, and county-level data is meant to help identify system cracks and weaknesses.

“I think this report is going to be a great tool for policymakers, employers and the nonprofit sector to take a hard look at what families are truly facing across the board in all counties,” Quevedo said. “It gives us clear, measurable goals.”

The information also will enable Pikes Peak United Way to focus grants on county needs, Bremer said.

“This helps us to where the nonprofit community can coordinate and rally to be able to take care of the families in the community in a more targeted way,” she said.

The top requests for assistance to Pikes Peak United Way’s 211 resource line and other communication consistently are for housing assistance, utilities and food, Quevedo said.

Residents living in the city limits of Colorado Springs and in southeastern El Paso County have the highest percentages of households enduring financial hardship, the data shows.

Making ends meet financially also is harder for the state’s youngest and oldest households, and Coloradans who identify as Hispanic or Black have higher percentages of the racial groups’ overall population living below the threshold.

As the major sponsor, Ent Credit Union, which has 550,000 members statewide, donated $65,000 to help pay for the report, said Annie Snead, director of community advocacy.

In addition, each United Way office in the state contributed $10,000 and will split the $40,000 cost to keep the report updated biannually.

“When we see some in our community are living paycheck to paycheck, and our mission is to improve members’ financial quality of life, we seek to help shape policy and from a grant maker’s perspective to allocate our funds to make change happen,” Snead said.

The report verified that Ent’s current grant awards in food security and affordable housing are on track, she added.

“We knew we need to help more with affordable housing — with many households spending way above 30% just on housing, that doesn’t give a lot of room for much else,” Snead said.

Child care also stands out as an expensive burden for Coloradans who have young children, she noted, with 3 in 4 single-mom-headed households living below the ALICE threshold.

Also of note, it’s been tough for low-income households to tuck away money, with nearly half of the households studied not having enough savings to cover a three-month emergency.

“These are hard-working Coloradans, and we need to serve as an umbrella to ensure that all of us are taken care of so we can move from surviving to thriving,” Snead said.