The Benefits Cliff Community Lab Project
At Goodwill Industries of the Southern Piedmont, our purpose is to help people see possibilities, seize opportunities, and prosper. We want people in our community to grow, be hopeful, and have equitable access to career opportunities.
We advocate, connect, engage, educate, and collaborate with key stakeholders on issues that directly impact how people in our community pursue the life they want to achieve.
Goodwill has been championing solutions to mitigate the impact of the benefits cliff on individuals and families in North Carolina. The Benefits Cliff Community Lab collaborates with various organizations to develop tools and solutions that will inform policy decisions and what employers and other key stakeholders can do to address the benefits cliff.

What is the Benefits Cliff?
The benefits cliff occurs when an increase in someone’s pay triggers a greater loss in public assistance. This happens because public assistance does not gradually decrease as income rises. Instead, it “drops off a cliff” at certain income thresholds.
For example, if someone receives a pay raise at work, that may push them over the income threshold of receiving public assistance like subsidized childcare, access to food via the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and housing vouchers. For many Americans, it’s actually more beneficial to keep a lower-paying job since that can qualify them to receive public assistance.
How Does the Benefits Cliff Impact Employers?
Individuals facing the benefits cliff must make difficult decisions regarding career advancement/professional development and qualifying for public assistance necessary to meet their basic needs. Fear of losing public benefits, because of the loss of basic support, can keep individuals from accepting more work hours, pay raises, or promotions.
Workers often must make trade-offs such as refusing a promotion or full-time employment to maintain access to subsidized health insurance and limit the costs of childcare, transportation, and income-based housing.
Sally’s Story
Sally just got a new job and went from making $16/hour to $21/hour. With her new income, her daughter can no longer receive Medicaid, and Sally is no longer eligible for healthcare subsidies. She can’t afford to pay the premium of adding a dependent to her employer-provided health insurance, especially on top of her rent, which increased by $500 due to her higher income. After weighing her options and considering the needs of her family, Sally decides to reduce her hours to part-time to ensure her daugther’s access to affordable healthcare and quality housing. Her goal is to use the extra time to further her education at the community college with the help of state and federal financial aid.

Our Goal
Our goal is to eliminate the benefits cliff all together. As income gradually increases, public assistance should gradually decrease until low-income workers reach self-sufficiency. Although public assistance would increase initially to bridge the cliff, it would decrease over the longer term relative to the status quo as workers reach self-sufficiency. This is a logical solution for workers, employers, and taxpayers.
Benefits Cliff Dashboard
The CLIFF Dashboard is an interactive tool that provides projections about income and public assistance along a career path. It compares the financial tradeoffs to different careers and illustrates how long it will take to achieve economic self-sufficiency. We encourage you to experiment with the dashboard to see implications of the benefits cliff in action.