Brookings Study: Detroit's low education = high unemployment

The unemployment bottom line boils down to education, according to a study of who's unemployed and who's not by Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

According to Brookings, in the Detroit, Warren, Livonia Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), workers with bachelor's degrees had only a moderately high unemployment rate in 2009 of 6.8 percent, while 21.5 percent of those with a high school diploma or less were unemployed in 2009.

In the last decade, an increasing number of jobs in the Detroit area demand a diploma and not enough workers have them. The study calculates that only 16 percent of adults in Detroit, ages 25 and older have a college degree even though 18 percent of occupations in the region require this level of education.

www.mlive.com/jobs/index.ssf/2011/09/detroits_low_education_high_unemployment.html#incart_mce

Bread for the World: Hunger and Poverty Facts

14.6% of U.S. households struggle to put enough food on the table. More than 49 million Americans—including 16.7 million children—live in these households.

Bread for the World has a compilation of additional statistics, facts, and links to reports on hunger and poverty at:

www.bread.org/hunger/us/facts.html

September 11, A Personal Poem

To my friends at Poverty Reduction Initiative:

There will be a short hiatus of my postings to this blog. My apologies for that. My daughter passed away on Labor Day. It was a week shy of her 25th birthday on 9/11.

With that in mind, please allow me to share a poem that I wrote for her on her birthday in 2008:

September 11

Some days are sacred
and filled with memories
for Christians it is
Christmas or Easter,
I suppose.
But for me the day I first held you child
is most blessed.

A father's bond started
on this day, your whole life ago,
only for me not so long.
It seems an instant
since the precious time
I first stroked your hair
and the tears rolled down my cheeks
as you entered my heart
right there, right then.

Mothers carry within their wombs
and love for months before dads.
The kicks of little hands and legs
and beats of tiny hearts are foreign to us
something to feel from the outside
not within.
So it is on day one
that our devotion begins.

Such it is.
A father's love
starts then, my precious daughter,
and for this dad
it never dies
as my heart was yours
that very day
and will always be
for this there is no end.

- Rob B.

God's Kitchen Opening Delayed in Battle Creek

God's Kitchen-Battle Creek, a new soup kitchen that was scheduled to open Labor Day, now will not open until Oct. 3, according to a press release Friday evening from the nonprofit's board of directors.

Pastor William Stein, chairman of the soup kitchen's board of directors, cited an "unsuccessful fundraising campaign" for the delay.

The kitchen was supposed to open inside the Springfield Farmers Market in Begg Park and serve meals from 5 to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday to low-income children, seniors and families. It also hopes to promote health and fitness through various health screenings and activities at the park. Stein had hoped to raise $10,000 by Monday's opening.

"We may have moved too quickly," Stein said in the release. "Our soup kitchen must be operational by Oct. 3 in order to provide assistance to the hundreds of individuals and families that are about to be kicked off of welfare."

www.battlecreekenquirer.com/article/20110903/NEWS01/109030305/God-s-Kitchen-opening-delayed

Black Unemployment Highest Since 1984

The August jobs report was dismal for plenty of reasons, but perhaps most striking was the picture it painted of racial inequality in the job market.

Black unemployment surged to 16.7% in August, its highest level since 1984, while the unemployment rate for whites fell slightly to 8%, the Labor Department reported.

"This month's numbers continue to bear out that longstanding pattern that minorities have a much more challenging time getting jobs," said Bill Rodgers, chief economist with the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.

Black unemployment has been roughly double that of whites since the government started tracking the figures in 1972.

Economists blame a variety of factors. The black workforce is younger than the white workforce, lower numbers of blacks get a college degree and many live in areas of the country that were harder hit by the recession -- all things that could lead to a higher unemployment rate.

But even excluding those factors, blacks still are hit with higher joblessness.

money.cnn.com/2011/09/02/news/economy/black_unemployment_rate/index.htm?iid=HP_Highlight

Who’s lovin’ it? The life of McDonald’s workers

McDonald's is, af­ter Wal-Mart, the nation's sec­ond-largest private employer, with 700,000 workers. And as the econ­o­my flags, and as more Americans seek cheap­er food, that number is ris­ing.

On April 19, McDonald's held a National Hiring Day and says that it brought in 62,000 new employees.

"We've got flexible sched­ules, ben­efits and jobs that can turn into satisfying ca­reers," McDonald's' Web site said. Yet many people above the poverty line would nev­er even consid­er working at McDonald's. The stigma of working at McDonald's is so cultur­ally ingrained that since 2001 the Oxford En­glish Dictio­nary has de­fined the neol­o­gism "McJob" as "an unstim­u­lating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. cre­ated by the expan­sion of the ser­vice sector."

La­bor advocates are pre­dictably in lockstep with the OED. "McDonald's is no worse than Burg­er King or Wendy's or anyone else in the fast-food indus­try," says Jose Oliva, national pol­icy co­or­dinator for Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, which advocates for food ser­vice workers nationwide. "But it pays the low­est wages pos­sible. It starts people at minimum wage and then keeps them at a low wage for as long as they can get away with it." (Minimum wage is $8.25 in the (Washington D.C.) and $7.55 nationwide. Accord­ing to the Bu­reau of La­bor Statis­tics, 4.36 million American workers are paid minimum wage or less.) ...

www.ongo.com/v/1740466/10586/A6C6AAAAB8201A2F/whos-lovin-it-the-life-of-mcdonalds-workers

114 Calhoun County Families Will Lose Cash Assistance Benefits in a Month

With more than 100 local low-income families preparing to lose state cash assistance in the next month, Calhoun County nonprofits are skeptical of their ability to fill the need.

State lawmakers approved new four-year limits on Michigan's cash assistance program last week. The changes mean 114 cases in Calhoun County and 11,162 around Michigan will lose welfare benefits starting Oct. 1, according to the Michigan Department of Human Services.

"It's just going to add more pressure to our system, that's for sure, and things are already challenging," said Bob Randels, executive director of the Food Bank of South Central Michigan.

So far this year, the food bank's distributions are already up 22 percent from a record-breaking 2010, Randels said.

Nancy MacFarlane, CEO of Community Action, which helps low-income families in Calhoun and three other counties, said the organization simply won't be able to take on the extra need.

"We help people until we run out of money," she said.

www.battlecreekenquirer.com/article/20110831/NEWS01/108310306/114-Calhoun-County-families-lose-cash-assistance

Son's Drug Bust May Make Mom Homeless

Sandy Douglas said she has no idea where she will be living after this week. Douglas, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, and her 11-year old daughter won't be able to afford the apartment they've lived in for several years. They've lost their government housing subsidy, commonly called a Section 8 grant after the part of the law that created it.

They lost it because of what Douglas' 20-year-old son did.

He was convicted of cocaine posession. Because he was on the lease for her apartment, the Grand Rapids Housing Commission - which administered her rent subsidy - revoked it because her son was busted for drugs.

"I kept saying, 'I'm not responsible for my son. He's 20,'" Douglas told Target 8 investigators.

But the Housing Commission takes a hard line on drug offenses. "Anybody on the lease, if caught, would automatically be terminated," Director Carlos Sanchez said. "We are mandated by the federal government not to serve people involved in drug-related activity."

Son's drug bust may make mom homeless: woodtv.com

Center on Budget & Policy Priorities Report: TANF and How Well Does It Provide Income Support for Poor Families?

President Clinton signed the 1996 welfare law 15 years ago today, creating the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant to replace the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program. We’ll present a series of posts this week that provide a closer look at how welfare reform has played out over the last 15 years. Today’s post focuses on TANF as a source of income support for poor families.

TANF’s early years witnessed unprecedented declines in the number of families receiving cash assistance — and unprecedented increases in the share of single mothers working, especially those with less than a high school education. But since then, nearly all of the employment gains have disappeared, and TANF caseloads have responded only modestly to increased need during this deep and long downturn.

As the following charts make clear, TANF remains an important source of income support for a small, but vulnerable group of families. However, because relatively few families receive TANF and benefits are very low, TANF plays a much more limited role in helping families escape poverty or deep poverty (i.e., income below half the poverty line) today than AFDC did.

www.offthechartsblog.org/tanf-at-15-part-i-how-well-does-it-provide-income-support-for-poor-families/

Economic Slow Growth Leads to Rapid Growth in SNAP

This week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is expected to release its latest update on the food stamp program. It's an important indicator of the nation's economic health — and the prognosis is not good.

Food stamp use is up 70 percent over the past four years and that trend is expected to continue.

The spike began in late-2008 and early-2009 when the worst of the recession was triggering massive layoffs and home foreclosures. Although the economy has been growing since mid-2009, the pace has been too slow to absorb the nearly 14 million people without jobs. Nearly half of those have been out of work more than six months.

As a result, the number of people seeking federal help with groceries has been soaring. At this time four years ago, before the recession hit, about 27 million people were using food stamps. Today 46 million get help through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — what most people call food stamps — which is roughly 15 percent of the population.

www.npr.org/2011/08/28/139968385/slow-growth-economy-spikes-food-stamp-reliance