BY GINA G. SCALA

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

It’s the silent, enduring message the Statue of Liberty has welcomed millions with since her placement in the harbors of New Jersey and New York.

More than 120 years later, the message's embrace and promise isn’t just for immigrants but for scores of Americans now among “the working poor.”

The working poor, American families struggling with or hovering near poverty despite working parents, grew by 200,000 in 2011, according to an analysis released Tuesday. The numbers are based on the most current data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Roughly 50 million Americans, or about 10.4 million families, live near the nation’s poverty line, Reuters reported. Poverty, in the United States, is defined as earning 200 percent less than the official poverty rate. A family of four would need to earn less than $22,811 to qualify, according to Reuters.

The analysis found the working poor jumped rose from 31 percent in 2010; three years after the recession officially ended.

“Although many people are returning to work, they are often taking jobs with lower wages and less job security, compared with the middle-class jobs they held before the economic downturn,” the report said. “This means that nearly a third of all working families…may not have enough money to meet basic needs.”

The results of the report are fairly surprising, Brandon Roberts, who co-authored the report, told Reuters.

"As the economy has improved one would expect that the benefits of that improvement would to some extent tie to these low-income families, and we'd see a decrease or at least stabilization in the numbers," said Roberts. "But the reality, the data show that the benefits of - even though it's modest economic growth - it's not going to these low-income families.”

In fact, the repot found the top 20 percent of Americans earned nearly 50 percent of all income; the bottom 20 percent received less than five percent. And southern states, such as Georgia and South Carolina, as well as western states Arizona and Nevada, had the largest increase of working poor.

Funded by four groups, including the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Ford Foundation, the report said children of the working poor totaled about 23.5 million or 37 percent.

"Folks in our state are working hard, but for many families, working hard just isn't enough. Things need to change," said F. Scott McCown of the Texas-based Center for Public Policy Priorities.