of New Jersey. A year after Hurricane Sandy washed away the

boardwalk here at Seaside Heights, it's once again been devastated by fire.

"And 48 hours after the fire, hundreds of people still came down here to the boardwalk,

just to take pictures and relive those boardwalk memories".

New Jersey will rebuild from the natural disasters, but the man-made economic disasters still

rocking America, is proving harder to overcome.

"The recession is not over for most Americans.

Most Americans have basically seen their incomes stagnate or fall since 2008. In fact, if you

look in the middle, the average typical American median income of a full time male worker today,

is lower than it was 40 years ago".

"Close to 50% of Americans are working and are economically insecure. And that means

they can't afford their housing, their healthcare, their childcare, their transportation. They

can do no saving for an emergency or their own retirement. Half of the country lives

in economic insecurity".

You mightn't pick it, but New Jersey is the third richest state in the richest country

in the world, yet it's possible to work full time here and live in poverty. The dominant

story's been Obamacare and the debt ceiling, the enduring story is the struggle to make

ends meet. The middle class in the US is shrinking as wages go backwards and secure jobs with

good pay and benefits disappear. "I did not expect I'd be in this situation.

I'd just turn 30, and when I turned 30 I started getting very nervous about the fact that I

need to really get out of this now". Meet the new face of service work in America.

Smart, tertiary educated and working for tips in a bar -- it's not the career Natasha Vukelic

had in mind when she graduated with top grades from a prestigious university and landed her

dream job in broadcasting -- shame about the money.

"When I was a reporter and anchor in Orlando and

an associate producer in Orlando, I was making ten or eleven dollars an hour, and then I

accepted a job as a news director and before taxes I was getting paid $28,000 a year".

"Gross, before tax?" "Before tax and I remember every two weeks

I would get my pay cheque and it was just over $800".

The pay was so poor Natasha quit and moved north to Jersey in search of a job offering

more money. Incredibly that was bar work. In a fast paced bar she can earn good money

on tips, but the base wages are appalling.

"So this is what you are earning?" "Yeah, you can see right here my rate is $2.13,

the hours are 28 hours. Without tax says it's $59.64 but after taxes it's $27.00".

"Just 27 bucks is the base wage". "And this isn't a weekly pay cheque, this

is

a pay cheque I get every two weeks. So that's my wage. So what is that... not even 15 dollars

each week. This one right here, my hours are 37 hours so it's almost a 40 hour work week.

After taxes my pay cheque is $32.00".

The federal minimum wage in the US is $7.25 an hour,

but for restaurant and bar staff it's much lower - $2.13. Yep you heard right. Just two

dollars and thirteen cents an hour. It's tips or starve".

At a seaside bar in Long Branch New Jersey we meet some of Natasha's friends and colleagues

and shout them a drink.

"I want to know who set the bar at $2.13? Like is there a restaurant

god that comes down and says in New Jersey we're going to pay you $2.13. I mean couldn't

they make it $2.57 so at least so we're closer to three, you know?"

But even among this crowd working hard for the money, not everyone's convinced about

a bump in the minimum wage.

"If you raise the minimum wage to make a significant dent you have to really raise it and unfortunately

that would probably kill a lot of proprietors and I don't want to jump into their defence,

but again, you're still going to rely on the volume of people coming and going".

Like Natasha, Mike Doyle is a former career professional grappling with a new reality.

"On slow days if you're getting zero in the way of tips, that's going to hurt".

It's sunrise and after serving drinks in a bar until the wee hours, Mike Doyle is off

to work at his second job.

Most days he still heads into Manhattan, 45 minutes across the water. Not so long ago

he was a one percenter, at the very top of the income pile. Now he's working two jobs

to raise a family and just getting by.

"How often are you heading into the city to trade?"

"I'll go in about four or five days a week. You know I can work from home. Sometimes if

I'm working too late at night in the bar I'll work from home just because I get home at

two in the morning and if I have to get up at five I need a few more hours than three

hour's a night of sleep". "But bar tending's your main job now?"

"Yeah well it is my main source of income for the moment, yeah. I mean what I do in

the city now is on such a smaller scale than what I used to do, that I, you know, a guy's

got to do what a guy has to do to pay for the bills.

Five years ago, seven years ago, I had the life of Riley. My hours were much shorter.

I mean I would be leaving New York at three o'clock and I was done, and my income was

ten times what it is now". Mike used to be a high flying Wall Street

trader until the disgraced broking firm MF Global collapsed and his hedge fund was hit

by the fallout. As we approach Manhattan he tells me his experience has changed his views

a little. "Five, ten years ago

I would have been the pull yourself up by your own bootstraps kind of guy but I think

I'm... I don't know... I think I'm a little bit... more...

I guess my views have maybe shifted definitely more towards the centre.

I wouldn't call myself a liberal but I think I'm more concerned with how other people are

able to provide for themselves. I think it's a real big issue now, especially with the

fact that I think every family I know has... all these people have two jobs".

"Well America's become a rich country with poor people. That's the irony".

At the hallowed halls of Columbia University in New York, Nobel laureate economist Joseph

Stiglitz has been charting the rising tide of inequality.

"They don't know day to day how much they have to live on, so you make them bear the

risk of this capriciousness of the people who walk through the door, on how much tips

and how much they're going to order, whether they're generous or whether they're tight".

"So if we've got college graduates taking jobs as waiters, servers, bartenders,

what does that mean for the people who used to do those jobs?"

"Well they move down the rung".

It's a little over half an hour from Manhattan to Newark New Jersey - but it's a world away.

In the shadow of a Newark public housing estate lives a young woman, with a young child, struggling

to get by. "My name is Tayzia. I'm 20 years old.

I have a one year old daughter. Her name is Zenar.

My mum growing up was a single parent. She had my brother and I. She was great. Like

we didn't want for anything. In school I was great. Actually my grades were always good,

A's and B's. I graduated in 2011. I graduated from Big

Picture Academy and a month or maybe three weeks afterwards I found out that I was pregnant

with my daughter.

She's the cutest thing in the world. She says everything from her first and last name, to

her ABCs. She knows my name is Tayzia. She's like the best thing that ever happened

to me". Tayzia Treadwell was working on minimum wage

in a fast food restaurant when her little girl came along. Her take home pay after taxes

was about $170 a week.

"I'm living in poverty, like it's a struggle. I will go without just so my daughter could

have". A bone in Zenar's back didn't form properly

during pregnancy. She'll need an operation when she's four or five.

"I'm sure I'll have to pay something additional, so it's like do I start saving now cause I'm

not sure of the exact cost yet but surgeries are normally expensive so...".

Tayzia is now working as a security guard on public housing tenements, earning a little

more than minimum wage, $10 an hour, although the cost of commuting can eat into the money.

Newark's a dangerous city. In the three weeks before we first met Tayzia, 16 people had

been shot. "It's hard, that's really the most I could

say about it, is like it's hard. I try not to dwell on things that I can't

change. I mean I pray nights for better days. I pray for a better job that pays more, but

it's just hard".

When you're struggling a visit to a cheap and cheerful diner can light up the day.

"What would you recommend? What's good?" "I usually have the fish and home fries with

fried onions. It's great". "Okay, well let's make it two".

"Okay". Here we go, baby.

"Oh that's me. Wow!" "Thank you".

"You want some ketchup?" "No just syrup".

Syrup? "I don't know how you can put syrup on it...

but it looks good. It looks really good and I am very hungry".

The café's owner, Rashid, overhears us talking about the minimum wage and weighs in with

his view. "My guys get above minimum wage. They all

get different salaries, but they definitely get above minimum wage because... I'll tell

you why. If I pay my guys the minimum wage and they're

barely getting by, they're not going to show the same passion, they're not going to have

the same drive, and they're not going to come to work on a

consistent basis because they're barely getting by anyway. But you pay good, you get good".

"You can't live on the minimum wage". "No you can't live on minimum wage. The average

rental for a one bedroom apartment in, you know, New Jersey has to be anywhere from eight

to a thousand dollars. That's their whole cheque for the month. You have to eat and

you have to have a phone, you have to have lights, you have to have a car, you have to

have -- I can name everything -- and no... you haven't even added food yet so, you know,

you definitely have to raise the wage in New Jersey".

But not by much according to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Christie's being touted as

a Republican presidential candidate in 2016. Earlier this year, the Democrats put up a

bill to raise the minimum wage in New Jersey by a $1.25 then link it to inflation so it

maintains its value - but Christie vetoed it. He wants the rise capped at $1, phased

in over three years but the fight goes on. "Actually most Americans support the raising

of the minimum wage. The minimum wage in the United States is at

the level, adjusted for inflation, that it was in the '50s. That's 60 years ago!"

"It is morally outrageous that we are in a country as rich as the US where we have such

low, incredibly low, minimum wages".

The Christie campaign hits Plainsboro, home to a large migrant community of Marathi Indians.

They're holding a festival in honour of Ganesh -- the god of wisdom, good fortune and prosperity.

The audience is rapt as Governor Christie evokes the American dream of social mobility.

"There are universal truths that we want a safe and secure world, a world

filled with opportunity that rewards hard work, a world where our children and grandchildren

can look forward to a brighter future for themselves than we had for our families.

That's what gives me such great hope for our future. Bright, happy, enthusiastic children

-- their lives completely ahead of them -- believing that tomorrow will truly be better than today".

That promise has been dashed in Camden. Camden New Jersey holds the grand slam of terrible

titles. It is the poorest city in the United States. It has the highest per capita crime

rate, the highest violent crime rate and the highest homicide rate in the country.

On State Street, the Board up Crew is sealing up abandoned homes to stop them being used

as crack dens.

"There's gunfire, just random gunfire, not so much shooting at you but you never know

what's coming". Our guide in Camden is Mike Brennan who lives

just outside the city. "Right before Halloween they would have Hell

Night, and parts of the city would go up in flames".

Mike used to work for the New Jersey Labor Department in a special team

sent into shutting factories to help workers find new jobs. But he lost his own job when

the program was cut back by the Christie administration. Camden, he explains,

was once a manufacturing metropolis -- home to the New York Ship Company, to RCA and to

the world famous Campbell soup. "Well,

manufacturing industry has not been replaced. What we see growing or thriving would be the

scrap metal business..... scrap metal, scrap wood".

"So they're basically recycling the abandoned factories".

"Yes. Close them up, tear them down and ship the

parts to smelters across the ocean". Police and emergency services is another thriving

industry and so is the drug trade. "People that worked in these manufacturing

facilities, to the extent that there was employment for them, they have to take a bus to the suburbs,

work in a fast food restaurant, work in a retail store for a minimum wage and people

can't survive on that so I guess they resort to more unsavoury activities".

If you think these problems are confined to New Jersey, think again. Across the vast continent,

from the Atlantic to the Pacific, working people are living in grinding poverty.

LA, the City of Angels, city of dreams, with its lure of fame and fortune.

But away from the beaches and the glamour of Hollywood,

out in the San Gabriel Valley, this is family accommodation for the working poor.

"This is pretty much where we sleep". "This is your room?"

"Yeah. Me and my wife on this side, my son Jeremiah on this side and my baby right

here, and then we have my daughter on this side, on top".