Tracking the COVID-19 Recession’s Effects on Food, Housing, and Employment Hardships

The unemployment rate is very high and millions report that their households did not get enough to eat or that they are behind in paying the rent. We are able to track the extent of this hardship thanks to nearly real-time data from several sources on the unfolding economic crisis.

The impacts of the pandemic and the economic fallout have been widespread, but are particularly prevalent among Black, Latino,^[1] Indigenous, and immigrant households. These disproportionate impacts reflect harsh, longstanding inequities — often stemming from structural racism — in education, employment, housing, and health care that the current crisis is exacerbating.

Relief measures have mitigated hardship, but there are significant gaps — including, for example, leaving out the poorest households from any increase in SNAP benefits — and implementation challenges that have delayed aid to some households. The measures are also temporary.

The data below, which we will update periodically, drive home the need for substantial, continued relief measures. The extent and severity of continued hardships like hunger, eviction, and homelessness will depend on whether such relief is robust and reaches those in need, as well as the trajectory of the pandemic and the pace of economic recovery. The implications for children in particular are significant: households with children face especially high hardship rates, which research has shown can have serious effects on children’s long-term health and financial security.

Emerging Data Show High Rates of Hardship

Figure 1

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The Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, launched in April, has provided nearly real-time weekly data on how the unprecedented health and economic crisis is affecting the nation. Data from this and other sources, such as unemployment data from Census’ Current Population Survey and the Department of Labor, show that tens of millions of people are out of work and struggling to afford adequate food and pay the rent. The impacts on children are large. (See figures 1 and 2. For more on our methodology and data by state, see tables 1-6 below.)

Difficulty Getting Enough Food

Data from several sources show a dramatic increase in the number of households struggling to put enough food on the table. About 29 million adults — 12.1 percent of all adults in the country — reported that their household sometimes or often didn’t have enough to eat in the last seven days, according to the Household Pulse Survey for the week ending July 21. The rates were more than twice as high for Black and Latino respondents (21 percent for both groups) as for white respondents (8 percent; see Figure 2). And 11 to 20 percent of adults with children reported that their children sometimes or often didn’t eat enough in the last seven days because they couldn’t afford it, well above the pre-pandemic figure. This translates into an estimated 9 to 17 million children who live in a household in which the children were not eating enough because the household couldn’t afford it.

Figure 2

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Inability to Pay Rent or Mortgage

An estimated 14.8 million adults who live in rental housing — 1 in 5 adult renters — were behind on rent for the week ending July 21. Here, too, the rates were much higher for Black (31 percent) and Latino (28 percent) renters than white (15 percent) renters.

Figure 3

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In addition, renters who are parents or otherwise live with children are nearly twice as likely to be behind on rent compared to adults not living with anyone under age 18. (See Figure 4.) Some 8 million children lived in a household that was behind on rent for the week ending July 21.

Figure 4

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While households that don’t rent their homes but have mortgage payments typically have higher incomes than renters, these households can also face difficulties, especially if they have lost their jobs or seen their incomes fall significantly. The Pulse data show that 13 million adults say they are behind in their mortgage payments as well.

Unemployment Is High, With Job Losses Concentrated in Low-Paid Industries

The unemployment rate jumped in April to a level not seen since the 1930s — and still stood at 8.4 percent in August. Some 13.0 percent of Black workers and 10.5 percent of Latino workers were unemployed in July, compared to 7.3 percent of white workers. Unemployment has also risen faster among workers who were born outside the United States (this includes individuals who are now U.S. citizens) than U.S.-born workers. Changes in unemployment going forward will likely heavily depend on both how well the nation does in controlling the spread of the virus and the steps policymakers take to provide effective stimulus that boosts overall demand for goods and services.

The majority of jobs lost in the crisis have been in industries that pay low average wages, with the lowest-paying industries accounting for 30 percent of all jobs but 51 percent of the jobs lost from February to July, the latest month of Labor Department employment data. Jobs in low-paying industries were down almost twice as much between February and July 2020 (12.9 percent) as jobs in medium-wage industries (7.4 percent) and three times as much as in high-wage industries (4.5 percent).

Figure 5

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Millions of Children Facing Hardship

Households with children are more likely to have trouble affording food or paying the rent or mortgage than households without children. Based on five weeks of Census Bureau Pulse Survey data collected from June 18 to July 21, we estimate that:

• Approximately 19 million children, or 1 in 4 children, live in a household that isn’t getting enough to eat, is behind on rent or mortgage payments, or both.
• These levels of hardship are substantially higher among Black and Latino children, reflecting longstanding inequities that the current crisis has exacerbated.

Figure 6

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Children in renter households, which tend to have lower incomes and less savings, are facing particularly high rates of hardship. An estimated 2 in 5 children who live in rental housing live in a household that isn’t getting enough to eat or is behind on rent. This represents over 10 million children.

Figure 7

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Hardship Trending Upward

The latest hardship data predate the expiration of $600 weekly supplemental Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation on July 31, but key measures of hardship were already rising in mid-July. (See Figure 8.) This could happen for several reasons. People may have exhausted the stimulus payments they received or any savings they were using to replace lost income, and the impact of higher food prices may be mounting. Continued delays in some workers’ unemployment benefits may be increasing hardship as well.

Figure 8

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Future hardship trends will depend on several factors, including the incidence of COVID-19, whether the job market rebounds, and the relief measures policymakers put or keep in place.

State-by-State Food, Housing, and Employment Hardship Data

Data by state show that hardship is widespread. The following charts provide state-level data on:

• the share of adults reporting that their household didn’t have enough to eat (Table 1);
• the share of adults saying children in their household were not eating enough because they couldn’t afford enough (Table 1);
• the increase in SNAP caseloads (Table 2);
• the share of adults behind on rent (Table 3);
• the number of children in households that aren’t getting enough to eat and/or are behind in the rent or mortgage (Table 4);
• the number of children in renter households that aren’t getting enough to eat and/or are behind in the rent (Table 5); and
• the three-month moving average unemployment rate and recent jobless claim data (Table 6).

For data from the Pulse survey — on those not getting enough to eat, being behind on rent, and the number of children facing various hardships — we average data from multiple weeks of the survey to improve accuracy. Information on the number of weeks included is available in each table’s notes.

Differences in Pulse hardship rates between states may reflect sampling error, so we suggest not drawing strong conclusions from modest differences between states. The data do show, however, that high levels of food need are widespread across the country.

Difficulty Getting Enough Food

The Pulse survey asks adult respondents if their household did not have enough to eat and if children in the household were not eating enough because the household couldn’t afford it.

Table 2 shows the increase in SNAP caseloads based on recent data available for each state through June compared to February 2020, the last month before the economic effects of the pandemic hit. Available data suggest that 6-7 million more people have applied and been approved for benefits since February, a 17 percent increase nationally. This rise is unprecedented: at the onset of the Great Recession it took 17 months to add this number of people to SNAP. While SNAP participation in most states is still substantially lower than during the peak months after the Great Recession, the increase so far due to COVID-19 has been rapid.

The differences in the increase in caseloads across states in part reflect differences in job losses across the months of the pandemic and the degree to which businesses were operating. They also may reflect how quickly states adapted their SNAP application processes to almost entirely remote communications (i.e., online and telephone) and how quickly they processed applications for unemployment insurance (UI). The Families First Act, the first large-scale relief bill enacted in March, allowed the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to provide states substantial flexibility in program operations to help them manage their workloads to focus on processing new applications — flexibility that USDA is now ending.^[2] The slower growth in June may reflect states taking higher income from UI benefits into account (for households that were approved for UI in late April or May), in addition to increased earnings from the economy partially reopening in some places. But UI income is slated to fall substantially as a result of the expiration of the temporary $600-per-week federal UI supplement, which very likely will cause SNAP caseloads to rise further. SNAP caseloads also shrink when the economy is strong, as they did in the years leading up to the COVID-19-related downturn.

Behind on Rent

Table 3 shows the number of adults reporting that they are behind on rent by state.

Children Facing Hardships

Because the Pulse survey was not designed to provide precise counts of children (but rather to provide more timely data on adult well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic than most household surveys), these figures are approximations, especially in smaller states.

High Unemployment

Table 6 provides state-by-state data on the unemployment rate over the June-August period and data on ongoing unemployment benefit claims.

Unemployment in most states has been highly elevated since April, as has the number of people claiming unemployment insurance benefits.