Again, let me repeat - the LONG TERM unemployment claims will eventually level off or heck "improve". We saw a record yesterday at nearly 6.9 million Americans. When this does improve the cheerleaders will be on CNBC in tow - of course some of the long term unemployed will have finally found jobs but a great many will simply fall off the map as they extinguished all their extensions (some going on 1.5 years). We're already starting to see the incipient stages of this as our welfare rolls begin to experience green shoots. [Jun 22, 2009: WSJ - Numbers on Welfare See Sharp Increase]
- Battered by massive layoffs, home foreclosures and nearly a decade of economic decline, more residents of Detroit's middle-class suburbs are having a tough time putting food on the table.
- State agencies and nonprofit groups that serve the poor in southeast Michigan say they are seeing an unprecedented rise in demand for food assistance across the region. They point to a pronounced increase in those seeking aid for the first time, often families unaccustomed to depending on food-aid programs. And they expect the numbers to grow as Michigan's jobs picture worsens.
- "We are even hearing from many people that, a year or two ago, used to be financial donors to the pantry."
- ... the spread of financial hardship has been jarring for a region where the manufacturing-based economy once provided for high wages and comfortable middle-class lifestyles.
- Jeff Holler said he broke down in tears when he and his wife, Velina, stepped into the Lighthouse food pantry near their home in affluent Oakland County in late May. Mr. Holler, an environmental engineer with a master's degree, had lost his $75,000-a-year job at a technology company a month earlier.
- "It was hard to take," recalls Mr. Holler, 52 years old, who says he spotted a longtime friend at the same center and tried to avoid being seen. "I've never had to do anything like this in my life."
- The problem is likely to get markedly worse in the coming months. Michigan, where the 14.1% unemployment rate is the highest in the nation, faces still more layoffs in its principal industries: auto manufacturing, which is in the midst of a sweeping restructuring, and the health-care business, which is reeling from the auto makers' benefit cuts.
- Moreover, state officials warn of a surge in the number of long-term unemployed workers who will exhaust the extended jobless benefits that until now helped them afford necessities like food.
- By the end of the year, roughly 100,000 residents will have lost their benefits, according to the state's unemployment insurance agency.
- In May, the caseload for Michigan's Food Assistance Program, which administers the USDA's food-stamp aid for the state, rose to 718,277 households, up 3.1% from April and nearly triple what it was at the start of the decade. (I believe we call this long term prosperity... trickle down economics working at its best as the highest concentration of wealth since the 1920s does its magic)
- Meanwhile, local food banks are straining to serve the expanding need. These privately run distribution sites, which depend on private and government food donations and serve families who might not qualify for government aid, are typically the first line of defense for families at risk of skipping meals or going without entirely.
- "Some of the areas where we're seeing some of the strongest need is where we don't have a network of agencies," says Gleaners's Mr. Wells. Until recently, he says, there was little demand for food aid in those neighborhoods.
- In Plymouth, a western suburb of Detroit that is home to a large community of auto industry employees, Trinity Presbyterian Church began distributing food to needy families late last year, says Mr. Wells, whose group supplied the food. The church had expected to serve about 200 families a month, but has seen more than three times that number show up in recent months. "What a crisis like this points out is that this can happen to anyone," says Mr. Wells.
- In Dearborn Heights, a suburban neighborhood near Ford Motor Co.'s headquarters, one mother of two says she made her first visit to a food pantry last month, after her husband lost his job as a mechanic making between $50,000 and $60,000 a year, causing the family's finances to unravel.
- "I remember sitting there in the parking lot going, 'I can't believe this,'" says the woman, who asked not to be identified. She said she didn't initially tell her husband that she had gone to a food bank for help, and that the rest of her family still doesn't know. They are scraping by on income from her part-time job, which pays less than $12,000 a year, and her husband's $360 a month in unemployment benefits.
- Fish & Loaves, a food pantry in the working-class suburb of Taylor, drew in Amy Marsh, a stay-at-home mother of three young children whose husband lost his retail job in mid-May. He had earned $2,200 a month at a local Best Buy. "It's like absolute failure," Ms. Marsh said of the experience. "I don't anticipate getting comfortable doing this at any point. It's just not in my blood."
As always as you read my "yellow weeds" keep in mind I am extremely biased based on locale. [Jun 25, 2008: I have Michigan Economic Bias] I am sure things are much more pleasant everywhere else and I am simply blind to green shoots sprouting throughout the land.
