The latest numbers on poverty in Maine look a lot like previous numbers – Maine is worse off than the nation and Washington County is worse off than Maine. And so, to a lesser degree, are Aroostook, Somerset, Piscataquis, Franklin and essentially every place north of Augusta. The story, with few modifications, is depressingly familiar and the solutions always just a few years away.

Mainers work. Across the state, most poor households had at least one family member working but still had trouble paying the bills, according to a joint project of the Maine Community Action Association and the Margaret Chase Smith Center for Public Policy at UMaine. Their new report says the most startling feature of poverty in Maine is that poverty is not, as usually assumed, most commonly found among single moms, but among people living alone. That population makes up 45 percent of the total in poverty.

This may be either good or bad news. Good, if state policies are generous to families with children, thereby keeping them out of poverty. Bad, if a single person working regularly can’t afford the necessities of life. Another new study, the annual Fordham Institute for Innovation in Social Policy, recently ranked Maine’s child-poverty rate 17th best in the nation – a middling rank for a state with lousy income levels.

Nearly 12 percent of Maine households overall are in poverty – that is, under the federal poverty threshold, according to the joint project’s work. A third of all jobs here fail to pay a livable wage, even by the modest measures of 185 percent of the federal poverty level or $10.29 an hour for a family of two, according to The Maine Center for Economic Policy.

The level of wages needed to make ends meet varies by region in Maine with, for instance, housing costs pushing up expenses in the southern part of the state. But on average a single parent with one child needs to earn nearly $14 an hour, according to the center, an amount beyond the pay for about half of all jobs surveyed. For two parents, both working, and two children, the livable wage needed is $10.81 for each parent. The wages required vary over the range of the number of children, whether two parents live at home and whether one or both work because of child care costs, tax treatment and the use of government support.

The number of numbers statisticians can throw at poverty is endless but the immovable fact in Maine remains: There are plenty of low-wage jobs around and it is extremely difficult for the three-quarters of the population without a four-year degree to get out of those jobs and into something better. Last summer, the center came up with several very good suggestions for addressing the problems that low-wage earners face. It suggested raising the minimum wage, expanding the earned-income tax credit and expanding the property tax circuit-breaker program, among others. The long-term solutions, through specialized economic zones, lower barriers to college, higher aspirations for the next generation, are equally applicable.