Helping the needy: Peoria volunteers at the Midwest Food Bank prepare food for delivery to the poor.

Job loss and poverty seem to be feared in the United States, maybe with good reason. However, maybe Americans would be wise to also fear the pride that can distort our perspective, and what should be our power.

Novelist, Guggenheim Fellow and Hugo Award-winning writer Kurt Vonnegut observed that fear of poverty can lead to shame, blame and isolation rather than empathy, solidarity and action.
“It is a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor,” he wrote. “Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters.
“Those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves,” Vonnegut continued. “This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times.”
Various government statistics show that Peoria has thousands of unemployed and poor people.
According to the U.S. Census’ most recent American Community Survey (from 2012), 12 percent of all Peoria County families live on incomes below the poverty line, and 16.8 percent of all people are poor.
For a household of three people – whether two adults and one child or one adult and two kids – that’s $19,790, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service.
Looking deeper, the data is worse.
For families with children younger than 18, the figure is 20.9 percent; for families with children under 5, it’s a staggering 24.6 percent countywide.
The worst news comes after factoring in marital status, which shows that 36.8 percent of households with a woman head of the family subsist below the poverty line. For households headed by women with children younger than 18, the figure is 44.7 percent and for families led by women with kids under 5 years old, it’s a stunning 63 percent – again, countywide.
Of course, there has been some relatively good economic news. The U.S. unemployment rate fell by 0.2 percent in June, to 6.1 percent, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said, and a separate survey said businesses claimed to create 288,000 new jobs this summer, while government employment rose by another 26,000 jobs, seasonally adjusted.
The number of unemployed declined by 325,000 in one month, to 9.47 million and 407,000 more people were employed in June than in May.
Poverty usually is linked to joblessness, and the country finished 2013 with a national job growth rate of 1.8 percent, according to a June BLS report. Growth is preferable to the alternative, but the data also shows weaknesses and, for too many, the danger of slipping into poverty.
BLS said the number of long-term jobless – those without work for at least six months – declined by 293,000, to 3.08 million, or 32.8 percent of the jobless. (Those are workers who also have been stuck without extended federal unemployment benefits since last Dec. 28.)
And the proportion of the unemployed and underemployed, including those so discouraged they stopped seeking work, is still one of every eight workers (12.1 percent).
Closer to home, the state of Illinois had two bad employment areas at the end of 2013, according to the BLS. St. Clair County, on the Illinois side of metro St. Louis, suffered the nation’s largest one-year percentage drop of employment through 2013, declining 3.1 percent, the BLS shows.
Next was Peoria County, whose decrease of 2.2 percent made it the second-worst county in the United States. Other Illinois counties – McLean, Madison and Winnebago – also suffered drops in employment.
Wages in those places over 2013 varied a bit more, with St. Clair’s average weekly pay falling 0.3 percent, Peoria barely improving (up a meager 0.5 percent); and the rest rising slightly: McLean up 1.1 percent, Madison up 2.1 percent and Winnebago up 2.2 percent.
Statewide, Illinois showed a barely noticeable 0.2 percent gain in weekly wages in 2013.
Meanwhile, the cost of living went up 2.0 percent between June of 2013 and June of 2014, according to the BLS’ Consumer Price Index release July 22, which enumerated the biggest factors in Illinois’ inflation: fuels and utilities.
“Household-energy expenses” were up 25.8 percent; “energy services” up 26.1 percent; and “utility (piped) gas service” up 26.3 percent from the year before.
Since the number of us who have jobs is not rising adequately, and the pay for the employed is falling behind the costs of everyday life, one would think policymakers’ lack of meaningful action would be top topics and strong motivations to foster change.
Most people would agree that that’s not happening enough.
In comparison to the U.S. jobless rate of 6.1 percent in June, Illinois’ was 7.1 percent, according to the Illinois Department of Employment Security, and, as of press time, Peoria’s most recent unemployment was 7.2 percent.
How does that compare to 2012 Census data?
Then, Peoria County’s population was about 186,494, with 146,381 of them 16 years old and above.
Of that number, 51,258 are not in the labor force, according to the Census.
Subtracting children 14 and younger – 37,291 (12,139 10-14 years old; 12,381 5-9 years old; 12,771 younger than 5) – that means that 13,967 people of age able to work are not.
That’s 7.4 percent.
That means since 2012, Peoria County’s jobless rate has changed a disappointing 0.2 percent.
So: Are Peorians too proud to complain – to demand more progress or a “redress of a grievance,” as the First Amendment guarantees the right to do?
Does pride skew any response so we blame ourselves or, worse, identify with those who won’t hire us or pay decent wages instead of neighbors discarded like so many byproducts of an industrial process?
It might be understandable to be, as the Motown song says, “too proud to beg.”
But are people so accepting or complacent, we’ve become “too proud to demand”?