Plight of working poor grows more dire in Mahoning Valley

New data from Second Harvest Food Bank of the Mahoning Valley provide the latest evidence that the economic climate of the Mahoning Valley is not nearly as sunny as other reports may lead many to falsely believe.

According to Second Harvest’s report released last week, the Youngstown-based food bank distributed more than 9.5 million pounds of food — equivalent to 6.3 million meals — in 2014 to hungry people in Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties. That alarming number reinforces other indicators that the scope of poverty and the need for hunger relief continue to escalate in our community.

Many may understandably scratch their heads wondering why. After all, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services reports that the unemployment rate for the Mahoning Valley fell significantly over the past year, dropping from 7.4 percent in December 2013 to 5.1 percent in December 2014. That positive surface data, however, masks some very important negative footnotes.

For example, more than 6,000 Valley residents disappeared from the labor force in that 12-month span. Some moved outside the area; many others simply became too frustrated to continue looking for work. Others counted in the employment data indeed are working but are severely underemployed and make poverty-level earnings.

That latter group — the working poor — drove the level of Second Harvest’s assistance in 2014 to an all-time high. As SH Executive Director Michael Iberis explained, the increased need among the working poor results from the economy lacking jobs to provide a decent living.

“Most will continue to work at low-paying jobs, if they have a job at all, and many of the jobs are part-time, meaning they have to work two jobs to make a living wage,” Iberis said.

A NATIONAL DILEMMA

The plight of the working poor stands not only as a Mahoning Valley problem or an Ohio problem, it is a national dilemma. The Working Poor Families Project, a nationwide initiative focused on reducing poverty via strong state workforce development policies, has amassed a warehouse of disturbing data. Consider:

Fifty-seven percent of American children live in a home that is either “poor” or “low income.”

The United States today has a higher percentage of workers doing low-wage work than any other major industrialized nation in the world.

Federal spending on welfare and public assistance has reached more than $1 trillion annually, and projections show it will skyrocket an additional 80 percent over the next decade.

In the Mahoning Valley, the level of hardship is even more dismal. Youngstown ranked as the sixth most impoverished area in the nation in a Census Bureau report last year. And 2015 has begun in a disquieting way, with layoffs planned or in place for hundreds of workers at Vallourec Star and other local metal and pipe producers for the boom-gone-bust industry of oil and natural gas drilling in our region.

“Unfortunately, we don’t see a lot on the horizon to give us hope that there will be fewer hungry people in 2015, but we are grateful so many donors and volunteers support our efforts,” Iberis noted.

That’s why those same donors and volunteers should be buoyed by additional reinforcements. Until our unemployment numbers begin to more clearly reflect a demonstrable improvement in the quality of life for tens of thousands of poor and working poor in the Mahoning Valley, compassionate residents should continue to answer the call to open their cupboards, wallets and hearts to Second Harvest.