One of every seven Americans; more than 43 million people, now lives in poverty
Claudia Coulton of the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at CASE says the 14.3% figure is actually not surprising, due to the depth of this recession.
CLAUDIA COULTON:
"This one is worse. It's pushed us higher in poverty than we've been in a long time - as a nation - so it's different than other recessions where a little bit of government spending and a little bit of loosening up of various government policies turn it around."
Coulton says the most telling number is that 21% of American children are now impoverished - that's a record high. There are no breakdowns for individual states yet, but she envisions Northeast Ohio still among the national leaders in regional poverty rates.
Economic analyst George Zeller agrees with Colton that this is an atypical recession, and that 'everyone' is feeling the impact.
He studied state unemployment numbers, also released Thursday, that show a slight decrease from this time last year, but remain higher than any year previous. He says the true surprise was that 'Columbus' leads the state in job losses.
GEORGE ZELLER:
"...that doesn't mean that we're doing well here in Cleveland. Particularly the suburbs are doing very poorly here - we have double the level of layoffs that we should see out in Medina County, in places like Lorain County, Portage County, places that usually do better than the center county here in Cuyahoga."
The biggest job losses are still in manufacturing and finance.
