Sometimes you can get numbed by numbers. Other times numbers make my eyes get wide. This is an example of the latter.

From the ILO’s report on the World of Work:

However, a vulnerable “floating group” – those just above the poverty level – increased from 1,117 million in 1999 to 1,925 million in 2010, mostly in low and low middle-income economies. This vulnerable group is close to three times the size of the middle-income group.

So, basically, in a decade, the great “free market” almost doubled the number of people who are struggling to keep from plummeting into poverty, though staying just above poverty isn’t any thing to be excited about.

You can count the ways this happened: greed, abuse of power, so-called “free trade.” All of these things have one thing in common: exploiting people and pushing down wages.