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Saturday, July 13, 2013

Which Is Greater: Full Time Jobs Or Americans On Food Assistance And Disability?

Over the past week there has been some speculation whether the number of Americans who receive food assistance and/or are on disability, outnumber full-time employed workers in the US.

Here is the answer:
There are 116 million Americans with full-time jobs according to the BLS (source, which includes 21.9 million government workers (source).

So far so good. Now the flip side showing how many Americans are reliant on the USDA's Food and Nutrition Services program or on Disability payments, i.e., food assistance in some form:
There are 47.5 million Americans on Foodstamps
There are 30.4 million Americans participating in the National School Lunch Program
There are 13.2 million Americans participating in the School Breakfast Program
There are 8.6 million Americans participating in the Special Supplemental Nutrition - Women, Infants and Children program Participants
There are 3.4 million Americans participating in the Child and Adult Care Food Program and the Food Donation Program
There are 0.6 million Americans participating in the Commodity Supplemental Food Program
There are 0.1 million Americans participating in the Food Donation Program
There are 8.6 million Americans on Disability

For a grand total of 112.5 million Americans on Food assistance (sources here  and here).

End result: there are 3.5 million more Americans with full-time jobs than there are Americans who are reliant on the government for their daily bread: a tiny 3% delta.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I will never forget the kindness shown by people who didn't know how hungry and scared I was even though I was working. I am not proud that I had to get an EBT card but I was so thankful for food I hope someday to pay back with action. I ate everything I was able to get and it saved a Type I diabetics life.

Anonymous said...

You're darn right working people are way outnumbered by the class of people in society today who live off the government.