Huffington Post
May 6, 2010
A new report by the Heartland Alliance suggests that the poor, the uneducated, and minorities in Chicago and in Illinois are bearing the brunt of the Great Recession.
From Huffington Post:
No matter what multi-billion-dollar corporations might be responsible for the current recession, it is the poorest and most disadvantaged among us that are suffering the worst for it.
This according to a new report by the Heartland Alliance, an advocacy group for the rights of people living in poverty. The report suggests that the poor, the uneducated and minorities in Chicago and in Illinois are bearing the brunt of the Great Recession’s negative impact.
“Our lowest income workers were the most impacted,” said Amy Rynell, director of Heartland’s Social IMPACT Research Center, in an interview with WBEZ’s Eight Forty-Eight. “They have unemployment rates that are Depression Era-like; 27 percent of them are unemployed.”
The report also shows that black Illinoisans suffered a 17.1 percent unemployment rate, compared with a 10.0 percent rate state-wide.
For those who are employed, jobs are paying less, and meeting the cost of living is harder and harder. Since the year 2000, the state has lost over 200,000 manufacturing jobs. To the extent that these jobs have been replaced — many of them still haven’t been — the new jobs that were created have largely been low-wage service jobs.
As a result, Chicago-area families are struggling to earn the $50,000 or more each year that’s required to meet the high cost of living in the area.
To make matters worse, the state’s ever-compounding budget crisis has led to drastic cutbacks in human services at a time when more and more people need them.
“We really rely on a strong and responsive safety net” in times like these, said Rynell. But due to the budget crisis, “these services have seen budget cuts, and reductions, and layoffs.”
“We’ve seen skyrocketing need in things like food assistance,” Rynell continued. Many people, even those with part-time employment, “are not able to make ends meet, and they’re making untenable choices each day between food or paying rent, food or medicine.”