If you can't afford the dollar store, where do you go?

For a marketplace, I'm Sabri Beneshore, in for David Brancaccio.

The S&P 500 officially hit correction territory yesterday.

That just means it's come down 10% from its last high.

But markets, even the S&P 500, are not the economy.

They are a sign of how investors feel about the future earnings of publicly

traded companies in general. If you want to know how the rest of America is feeling, and in

particular how low-income Americans are feeling, you could look to Dollar General. Its CEO, Todd

Veso, said in its earnings call this week that its core customers,

these are people who earn under $40,000 a year, are struggling even more.

Customer traffic fell last quarter.

Marketplaces, Kaylee Wells, has more.

Dollar General's customers are struggling and end-of-month store sales are slowing,

says retail analyst Matt Todd with S&P Global.

Lower income households who are their core customer are running. store sales are slowing, says retail analyst Matt Todd with S&P Global.

Lower income households who are their core customer are running short on cash.

Plus, there's inventory loss, something called shrink is high.

Elevated shrink, I think, is another sign of people struggling at the lower end of the income spectrum. Third-party theft is the largest component of it, people stealing things.

Dollar General CEO said customers have already cut out discretionary purchases.

Now they're going without some basic necessities, too.

Partly by having a more strict definition of necessities.

The more income you have, the more we tend to consider things as necessities.

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