This past weekend almost every
newspaper and news website in the country had at least one headline in common:
the jobless rate of 3.9% is at a 17-year low after 91 straight months of job
growth that began during the Obama Administration. On top of the historic
progress we’ve already made through the No Kid Hungry campaign, this may have
as great an impact on childhood hunger now and in the years ahead as anything
else we do. When the number of unemployed is cut by more than half, and
millions more are working, there are certainly many more parents able to feed
their families on their own.
We tend not to
focus as much on macro-economic trends as we do on school breakfast
legislation, and new summer meals sites, but we should. Those we serve
are embedded in these statistics. Our work is not in isolation from but
intimately connected to these economic forces, more so than most issues.
We’re in search of an economist who will share his or her strength by
volunteering to help us better understand the correlations between employment
and wage growth with childhood hunger. For now, I urge all of us to keep
at least one eye on the bigger picture.
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