Also, while I am not including this in my answer because China's numbers are not relevant to the title question, implicit in many of the posts in the question is that working two jobs is unheard of in China. Most multiple job holders in the USA have various part-time gig jobs, which is a sector that has also taken off in China, so China probably has a fair number of people with more than one job by the standards of the first survey.

Had to downvote, because I would strongly read the claim as "Are there americans who work full time, but don't earn enough to pay for basic necessities", not "all americans" or "most americans", just "americans". (Which given the very high World Bank poverty rates in the USA and the minimum wage that doesn't get you over the state specific poverty lines in most/all states... that seems like not deserving of a "deemed incorrect" claim)

For comparison purposes, about 11% of Americans are below the poverty line. So they're barely surviving no matter how many jobs they have. Another point of comparison: When I was growing up in the 60's and 70's, a family with just a single breadwinner with one job could be in the middle class. Now it's common for both parents to work (either by necessity or by preference).

@DavidMulder - Well, you can certainly choose to. Most claims of existence are trivially and boringly correct. If one chooses to interpret the claim as asking whether at least two people meet the qualifications, it's probably true of very close to every country in the world, for that matter.

@DavidMulder you might want to edit the question then because I honestly can't understand how you could read it that way. Of course some people, in any country, work and still aren't paid enough to get by. That's hardly controversial (meaning there is no controversy about whether that is true, it clearly is). The question is whether "Americans need to", which clearly asks if this is a trend or a common issue. I don't see how we could read this as "is there anyone at all in the US whose full time salary doesn't provide them with enough money to live off of".

@Barmar Supply and Demand for that one.. Double the work force you halve the value of work.

@terdon - Bearing in mind that the title claim comes from a social media user in China, who might not be familiar with the USA, and indeed seems not to be, I think it is pretty reasonable to think that they are asking whether "work two or more job or die/end up on the streets" is the "usual" state of affairs in the USA. Anything else would either be too subjective to answer, in any case (how big is "big"?) or trivially true if interpreted as the other user proposes (Are Americans cannibals? Yes).

Now, a perhaps more interesting or useful question would be something like "Do more Americans have to work two jobs than people in most countries?" or "...in most countries of similar income?" or given the context, "Do more people have to work two jobs in the USA than in China?" That would let one accurately post the "USA has a bad social safety net" answers that many people might like to see. But, well, that isn't what the question asked, and it certainly cannot be inferred from the original claim.

@Obie2.0 Often propaganda exaggerates claims to make them seem more general. There was that Fox News piece where Tucker Carlson visited a fancy Russian grocery store to show how great life is under Putin, but one store can't be assumed to be representative.

@Barmar - Right, and indeed, one could ask "Do Russians not have enough money to buy groceries?" and "Do Russians have more than enough money to buy groceries?" and answer them equally with "yes" by the interpretation of "Do some people....?" that some users are proposing for the claim addressed here.

Another big part of "to survive", in addition to "provide shelter, food, and utilities", is "to have access to health care". Many lower wage jobs do not provide affordable healthcare options. Quite a few people are living with undiagnosed conditions because they don't perceive the ability to get regular check ups [ citation needed I'm sure ] Yet another big part of "to survive" can be "saving for retirement". If your main job does not provide enough to plan for retirement, a second income stream can help ensure that once you've retired, you can actually afford to continue to live.

@abestrange - If we were to fairly evaluate those factors, we would need to have some way of figuring out how many people die due to lack of healthcare in the USA (around 45,000 per year, according to one source, though it seems to count "contributing factors") and how many people die due to lack of retirement savings (likely fewer, but I cannot readily find any information), them estimate how many more would if they worked only a single job, which is a much trickier thing to do.

One might say, for instance, that 30 million people don't have health insurance in the USA, and maybe 2 million will die over the 47-year cohort in the study, so we could add those in as "people who would not survive without another job"—but it is likely that many of those people do work two or more jobs! And in any case, it would be a small correction to the final number (under 1 percentage point, because we would need to look at the number of people in the population across 47 years), and the whole calculation is too fuzzy for me to feel comfortable including it in a Skeptics answer.

Still, I mention the possibility of people who don't work two or more jobs and do not survive, and I would not find it at all unreasonable to suggest that somewhere around a million people in the USA do not survive over the course of about 50 years due to a lack of insurance that working additional time could theoretically remedy (but, careful, because overwork is also a major health risk, so many of those people are really in a no-win situation).

@terdon Given that in most developed country minimum wages make this impossible I would argue that this is quite a unique thing about the United States, thus not making it a trivial claim.

@terdon "some people, in any country, work and still aren't paid enough to get by. That's hardly controversial" - You may be surprised at how commonly people spread the myth that anyone can get out of poverty if they really tried to. It's especially spread by Republicans - it goes nicely with their widespread opposition to measures that would actually help get people out of poverty. And many things are "clearly true" and are still controversial.

@DavidMulder - The USA does in fact have a federal minimum wage. It's low, but it exists. But as the existence of that minimum wage shows, the existence of a minimum wage alone need not guarantee that there is no one who needs to work two jobs to survive. There's too much heterogeneity in people's individual needs and in the cost of living within countries. Yes, even in the good old Netherlands, there's a (smallish) group of precarious multiple job holders.

The problem is that "someone" is an incredibly low bar that you've set. Now, one could perhaps productively ask whether there's less need to work multiple jobs in the Netherlands, which I daresay would come out in favor of the Netherlands and look rather bad for the US of A. But the only problem is...that's not the claim being challenged in the question.

@NotThatGuy those two claims do not contradict each other.

@Lichtbringer I'm not sure what you're referring to. I didn't mention anything contradicting anything else.

what kind of expenses do people have who work two full-time jobs? Are basic necessities actually that expensive (when bought as cheaply as reasonably possible)? Or are these people bad with money, feeding family members or in debt?

@Michael Some people are really bad with money. An entire lifetime of making bad money choices can make a difference. I have a relative who is barely scraping by, yet when their spouse passed away, instead of putting the life insurance money aside for food, mortgage, or other necessities, they bought a brand new luxury car.

The answer concludes: Americans must work two jobs to "keep our roof over our head" could be interpreted to mean that most or all Americans are either working two jobs or experiencing homelessness. There are more options than that, though. For example, a young married couple might be living with his or her parents because they can't afford rent or a mortgage. Those two would not be homeless, but they still can't afford to keep a roof over their heads - be it with one job or two.

@J.R. I would say that those people do not have to work two jobs to keep a roof over their heads.

My interpretation of "have to do X in order to do Y" is that if you don't do X, you don't get Y. Someone who has Y through some other source doesn't have to do X to get Y. E.g. most Americans have to work to have money in the bank; Jeff Bezos does not have to work to have money in the bank.

Nor does he have to work to have a roof over his head, for that matter....

Of course, it is possible that the person making the statement meant to include people who, if they didn't have another source of lodging, would have to work to have lodging. So Bezos and minors, among other things. But I dont think it's likely.