Located in one of the wealthiest (1) in the United States, the Manna Center in Maryland is a lifeline for the working poor -- providing boxes of food so families do not have to choose between paying an electricity bill and buying (2) .
Development Director Mark Foraker said that unlike the country’s (3) unemployment rate, the number of needy households in Montgomery County actually has gone up since the 2008 recession.
“In the (4) year 2008, we were serving an average of 2,070 families a month. Currently our numbers that we are serving are 3,760 families each month.”
The numbers are a (5) contrast to the economic progress cited by President Barack Obama, who noted in an October 2 speech at Northwestern University that 10 million new private (6) jobs have been created in the last four and a half years.
“All told, the United States has put more people back to work than Europe, Japan, and every other advanced economy combined. I want you to think about that. We have put more people back to work, here in America, than Europe, Japan, and every other advanced economy combined,” said Obama.
But in that same speech, Obama (7) that despite the increasing number of Americans returning to the workforce, it will take much longer to (8) what he calls a profound erosion of middle-class jobs and incomes.
George Washington University Economics Professor Tara Sinclair said the U.S. labor market and economy still look starkly different than before the recession.
“Wages aren’t rising very quickly, and there are a whole lot of people who have (9) out of the labor force completely. So if you look at the employment to population ratio, we are still way below where we were before the recession or for many years before that. We look like the 1970’s.”
And with more people (10) for low-paying jobs even as costs increase, officials here at the Manna Center don’t anticipate the need going down anytime soon.