Even before she lost her job this past spring, things were tight for Nikki Cox. She worked as a service representative at an insurance company in North Carolina and had been making $20 an hour. Half of her income went to rent.
“If I did have something left over, it might be about a hundred [dollars], maybe,” she says. But even that “would buy my groceries and my necessities.”
It left Cox in trouble when her company’s business dropped and her hours were cut. She took a temp job elsewhere, but that paid $15 an hour, a substantial hit on her income. The hours also conflicted with her other job, which she left because she figured she would be laid off soon.
Then in May she got COVID and had to stay out of the office for three weeks, unpaid. At one point, Cox says she relied on customer points at convenience stores to get free dinners. Her nephew also helped.
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