The Faith Community’s 2012 Year-End Jobless Statement

2012 Year-End Jobless Statement from the Interreligious Working Group on Domestic Human Needs

January 15, 2013

Reflecting on 2012, we give prayerful thought to the 12.2 million Americans who found themselves without a job at the end of the year. As people of faith, we continue to be concerned about our country’s slow economic recovery. While we are encouraged by the steady growth we have seen over the past year, we still remain particularly concerned for those individuals often left on the margins of the conversation about economic recovery. We also recognize how vulnerable this growth is to the decisions currently being made by Congress in regards to budgetary spending and deficit reduction.

We began the year with a jobless rate of 8.3%, and ended the year with a decreased rate of 7.8%. The average unemployment rate for 2012 was 8.1%. Still, we continue to be deeply concerned about the long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more), of which there were 4.8 million last month alone— 39.1% of the unemployed population. We were encouraged in December to see that Congress extended unemployment insurance through the end of the year, since this program is such a crucial resource for the millions of people who are experiencing long-term unemployment. Among specific worker groups the average unemployment rate in 2012 for adult men was 7.5%, adult women 7.4%, whites 7.2%, blacks 13.8%, Hispanics 10.3%, and Asians 6.0%. Charts with a month-by-month analysis of unemployment among specific worker groups can be found at the end of this statement.

2012 was a year of steady growth, yet Congress still failed to pass any major piece of legislation that created jobs in a large-scale manner. Mixed with the potential threats of massive program and budget cuts, our economy still struggles with the danger of a double-dip recession. While steady growth in encouraging, until we start to see a significant change in the number of new jobs being created each month—especially those focused on vulnerable communities— the faith community still remains cautiously optimistic about the job situation.

As Congress negotiates the second phase of a deficit reduction deal it is paramount that in order to continue the steady job growth that we saw in 2012, that funding is protected for programs that provide job training (including the Workforce Reinvestment Act), education, and safety-net for the unemployed, especially unemployment insurance, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps) and the Emergency Food and Shelter Program.

It is also critical that Congress and the White House introduce a serious and comprehensive job proposal that helps Americans get back to work, in both the public and private sector. Another year should not go by while Congress waits to pass real job creation legislation. A particular emphasis should be made in providing training and jobs in growth industries such as home healthcare, technology, education, and construction. In addition, any new jobs created through federal legislation must generate sustainable employment that pays fair wages and provides opportunities for advancement. A new jobs program must address the immediate needs while also creating a long-term path to economic security for both workers and employers.

Our faiths inspire our deep commitment to unemployed workers and their families. We are now looking to Congress to ensure that the federal government continues to work with our faith communities in this effort. To this end, we will keep you abreast on the monthly unemployment situation, sharing stories and information on struggling families who often fall under the radar.

As we reflect on our economy’s health during the past year and look towards a 2013 with prayers of progress in the job market, we remind our elected officials that they must act soon to aid those who have suffered unemployment far too long. As scripture tells us, “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.” Proverbs 31:8-9

You can find DHN’s Jobs Statement of Principles at http://domestichumanneeds.org/uploads/DHN-Jobs-Statement-of-Principles.pdf.

American Friends Service Committee
Bread for the World
Church of the Brethren
Friends Committee on National Legislation
Interfaith Worker Justice
Islamic Society of North America
Jewish Council for Public Affairs
The Jewish Federations of North America
Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Washington Office
National Advocacy Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd
National Council of Churches
National Council of Jewish Women
NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby
The Office of Social Justice of the Christian Reformed Church
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, Institute Justice Team
Union for Reform Judaism
The Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations
United Church of Christ
The United Methodist Church General Board of Church and Society

PDF of the Statement including monthly graphs

Why Food Stamps Matter: A Profile of Vernell Livingston

By Rev. Michael Livingston, Director, NCC Poverty Initiative

Vernell Livingston thanks God for getting up every morning “with a portion of good health.” She’s had the blessings of marriage and motherhood and she is in good health, though she is a diabetic, as she lives a life of modest contentment as a senior citizen.

Mrs. Livingston participated in the Food Stamp Challenge that launched the Fighting Poverty With Faith Mobilization last fall responding graciously to our invitation to her to guide congressional legislators on Capitol Hill and religious leaders on a shopping trip on the weekly allotment given to SNAP recipients ($31.50). The coincidence of our last names (we are not related) created a bond between us and she welcomed an opportunity to share more of her story.

The second eldest of 12 siblings, Mrs. Livingston has had a life of hard work for very little compensation. She was picking cotton and tobacco in South Carolina alongside her sharecropping father when she was 12 years old. She never went to college, indeed, she wasn’t able to finish high school so that she could help the family make ends meet and assist her mother with the raising of their large clan.

When her father suffered a stroke, her fate was sealed. She did back breaking work as a day laborer picking cotton and was exposed to toxic chemicals picking tobacco until she was eighteen or nineteen years old. The young Vernell moved north to Washington, DC with an aunt and cared for the aunt’s son for a few years before returning to South Carolina where she married a logger and gave birth to a daughter.

In the following years she worked several extremely low-paying jobs and after returning to Washington DC she spent most of her adult years working as a maid in the hotel industry.

Her last eight years working were as a floor manager for a motel chain. Chronic knee pain led to a full disability and eventually to two knee replacement operations on the same knee. She received disability checks until she began receiving Social Security benefits in 1991. In all her working years she never had an employer supplied pension plan and her low wages insured that her Social Security benefits would be meager.

When I asked Mrs. Livingston how much her monthly Social Security checks amounted to, she lowered her head sheepishly, paused, and said, “Reverend Livingston, I get $885 a month.”

I cannot say precisely how she felt, but any and all shame should be the province of a society that has not taken good care of those who have labored long and hard and been denied access to opportunities by familial necessity and the structural inequalities, racial and economic, so prevalent in our society.

Mrs. Livingston, many years a widow now, lives on $885 a month plus what she receives in SNAP benefits (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). Those benefits were cut, without explanation, from about $200 per month at the end of 2011 to $33 a month in January of this year.

Before the cut in SNAP benefits she had an annual income of $13,020; her income in 2012, after the cut, will be just over $11,000. She pays $181 a month in rent in a government subsidized senior housing complex and has a car note. After rent and car expenses, Vernell has about $500 per month for everything else. SNAP is a lifeline. She’s thankful for what she has so far received and worried about the recent cut and the awful possibility that more cuts could be coming.

The NCC’s Poverty Initiative works with other ecumenical and interfaith partners to ensure that programs that are lifelines for vulnerable people like Vernell Livingston. We are working to make certain people like Vernell are not further victimized as a result of the critical budget and tax decisions that will be made in the months to come and especially in the “Lame Duck” session of congress at the end of this year.

Your support for our work, your work really, is essential to the witness of people of faith in the 37 member communions of the National Council of Churches.

I wrote earlier that I was not related to Mrs. Livingston, though we share the same last name. To tell the whole truth, we are related, to each other and to you, through our belonging to the human family. We are all God’s family, make in God’s image, each one of us. I hope you will remember Vernell Livingston in your prayers and in your giving. (Click here to make a contribution to the Poverty Initiative of the NCC.)

Fighting Poverty with Faith is an annual mobilization of faith communities across the United States in common actions against poverty. Co-chaired by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Catholic Charities, and the National Council of Churches, the mission of Fighting Poverty with Faith is to educate the public and build political will to participate in the goal to cut U.S. poverty in half from 2010-2020.

Click here to sign up for more information and get involved in the Nov. 18-28, 2012 mobilization.