37,000 fewer individuals applied for unemployment assistance this week, leading to speculation that the number of jobless is on the decline. However, last week 391,000 people sought the social safety support of unemployment benefits to help them through their economic instability. Both during and now after the recession, the media and academic work has tended to focus on the people needing support through situations of joblessness, underemployment and diminished earnings, but little attention is paid to the people working within the systems designed to keep vulnerable people afloat through social and economic uncertainty. When someone recently laid off walks through the doors of the unemployment office, what are the stories of the people serving them, and how has the recession affected the workers in those venues? Government bureaucracies uphold the fibers of the social safety net through the many offices that provide unemployment benefit, welfare, food stamps and a myriad of other programs. People of color are over-represented amongst the unemployed, while frequently the frontline providers of government service to them are also disproportionately non-white.

Last week, Dr. Celeste Watkins-Hayes of Northwestern University spoke to a small gathering of students and academics at NYU Wagner. Watkins-Hayes writes about welfare bureaucracies and health issues and their intersections with racial identity. In her article "Race-Ing the Bootstrap Climb:Black and Latino Bureaucrats in Post-Reform Welfare Offices" (Social Problems, 2009), she analyzes the Black and Latino workers who make up a disproportionately large part of the workforce that assesses TANF claims. She provides an interesting sociological study of the experiences of both worker and recipient in welfare offices and other "catch-all bureaucracies". By examining the public face of the "front line", Watkins-Hayes raises questions about the relationship between the unemployed and the people in charge of enforcing and mediating the distribution of their benefits. While efforts to racially diversify public sector and social service agency employees have often resulted in increased racial representation amongst frontline workers,  cuts to public sector jobs can translate into increased economic pressures on those workers of color--workers of color who, Watkins-Hayes argues, have gained access to middle-class status in part due to public sector employment. Watkins-Hayes reminds us that the offices of the broader system of social support in the post-recessionary period is worthy of observation--- not only for the effect that the benefit offices have on those who need them, but also for the people who administer the benefits and manage the successes and challenges of those who walk through its doors.

Learn more about the Women of Color Policy Network and research on poverty here. To read more about Dr. Watkins-Hayes work, click here. 

The House voted today to pass the FY 2012 Agriculture Appropriations Bill, cutting WIC, food stamps, and other nutrition safety net programs for low-income families. The legislation won approval by a slim margin of 217-203.

In an earlier blog post and electronic action alert issued on Tuesday, the Network urged advocates to oppose the cuts and call on Representatives to reject the bill, which now advances to the Senate for a vote.

If approved in the upper chamber and signed into law, the legislation will reduce WIC funding by $685.7 million compared to FY 2011, effectively denying assistance to up to 350,000 low-income women and children. Though food insecurity is on the rise - a record 21 million households are currently reliant on food stamps - the legislation would also reduce SNAP funding by $2 million compared to the President's FY 2012 request. 

Communities of color would be disproportionately impacted by the proposed cuts. A 2010 Feeding America study found that 29 percent of all Latino children and 38 percent of all Black children in the U.S. received food assistance in 2009, compared to just 11 percent of white children. An even greater percentage of families of color utilize WIC, including 9 out of 10 Latino infants born in the U.S. in 2008.

Nutrition assistance programs are not only a moral imperative - they have also been hailed by economists as a critical cost-savings measure. Every $1 invested in WIC, for example, is estimated to save between $1.77 and $3.13 in health care costs during the first sixty days of an infant's life.