Growing number struggle to pay bills as Trump faces cost of living pressure
Source: The Independent
Monday 17 November 2025 07:40 EST
A new analysis of consumer data reveals a concerning trend in the United States, with a growing number of households struggling to pay their utility bills, signalling a potential warning for the nation's economy.
According to The Century Foundation, a liberal think tank, past due balances owed to utility companies surged by 9.7 per cent annually, reaching an average of $789 between April-June periods of 2024 and 2025. This increase coincides with a 12 per cent jump in monthly energy bills over the same timeframe.
Julie Margetta Morgan, the foundation's president, highlighted the significance of these figures. "Consumers usually prioritise their utility bills along with their mortgages and auto debt," she stated. "The increase in both energy costs and delinquencies may suggest that consumers are falling behind on other bills, too."
“There’s a lot of information out there about rising utility costs, but here we can actually look at what that impact has been on families in terms of how they’re falling behind," Margetta Morgan said.
Read more: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/century-foundation-trump-cost-living-b2866613.html
Link to Century Foundation REPORT - Fueling Debt: How Rising Utility Costs Are Overwhelming American Families
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Kept seeing it on the signs. In fact there's still those signs around. All these people who aren't seeing this are either blind or have TDS 
It was related to this earlier story (from Oct.) - Conshohocken Residents Push Back on Proposed AI Data Center
The plan was apparently to repurpose an abandoned steel mill and build an AI data center on the site.
More on that effort -
https://www.inquirer.com/consumer/technology/ai-center-plan-plymouth-conshohocken-20251003.html
https://patch.com/pennsylvania/plymouthwhitemarsh/critical-vote-data-center-plymouth-twp-monday-tensions-rise
The application was not heard during their last meeting in October and was on the schedule for yesterday - https://www.plymouthtownship.org/data-center-update/
The latest update that I heard this morning was that the initial developer pulled their submission.
I live about 6 or 7 miles from there.
(side note - this is the 3rd try at this as I kept running into the Cloudflare outage impacting DU 
)