“We have the best economy maybe in the history of the world,”President Trump insisted during his 60 Minutes interview on Nov. 2. Oregonians and other Americans who depend on food stamp benefits under SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, likely beg to differ.
While President Trump and his entourage were enjoying an over-the-top “Great Gatsby”-themed Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago last week, millions of Americans were worrying about the loss of their SNAP food benefits. The timing could not have been more unseemly.
On. display at Mar-a-Lago. “‘She’s got an indiscreet voice,’ I remarked. ‘It’s full of—’ I hesitated. ‘Her voice is full of money,’ [Gatsby] said suddenly.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
President Trump’s Great Gatsby-Themed Halloween Party at Mar-a-Lago, 2025
One-sixth of Oregon’s population. 0.16, 16%. No matter how you put it, a lot of Oregonians depend on SNAP benefits.
Currently, benefits average just over $6 per person per day. In fiscal year 2024, that translated into about 757,000 of our neighbors, including about 210,000 children and 130,000 adults aged 65 and older.
With the federal government shutdown, Oregon and other states have run out of money to distribute to the more than 42 million Americans who rely on SNAP. The Department of Agriculture has claimed it can’t spend $6 billion sitting in reserves, but two federal judges have ordered the Trump administration to use contingency funds to fund SNAP during the shutdown. The Trump administration responded in court filings that it would use contingency funds to provide partial SNAP benefits in November.
The administration said it would send partial payments this month, but eligible households may receive just half of their usual amounts and the partial payments could take weeks to arrive. (As of mid-day on Nov. 4, however, Trump muddied the waters by posting on Truth Social, “SNAP BENEFITS…will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do.”)
Further complicating matters, on Nov. 5 The New York Times reported that some normal food stamp recipients may receive nothing at all in November because of the way that the White House has chosen to pay partial benefits during the government shutdown.
“The problem stems from the way in which the administration has opted to fund benefits, and the intricate rules it has foisted on states this week to calculate aid amounts for the 42 million people enrolled in SNAP,” the New York Times said. “For nearly 1.2 million households, or almost five million people, the changes may result in benefits of $0 in November, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning group, which analyzed the government’s public filings and shared its findings early with The New York Times.”
On November 6, the situation changed again when a federal judge, John McConnell, ordered the Trump administration to fully fund November’s food-assistance benefits by November 6. Of course, the administration’s lawyers told the court it was appealing the order.
While the legal wrangling persists, it’s appalling that so many Oregonians, the majority children, disabled or seniors, are in such dire straits that the federal government has to step in to help them get enough to eat.
According to an analysis of USDA data by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), Oregon ranks third in the percentage of the state’s population that relies on SNAP. Only New Mexico and Louisiana are in front of Oregon.
Meanwhile, in a reflection of the number of Oregonians living on the edge, Oregon food banks report they are being hit with a deluge of SNAP participants desperate for food, even though they got their last benefits as recently as last month. At the same time, food banks are seeing some of the thousands of federal employees who are going without pay during the government shutdown. That’s all consistent with the Federal Reserve’s report on America’s economic well-being in 2024 that found 37% of Americans couldn’t pay for an unexpected $400 expense without turning to a credit card and 60% of adults said that changes in the prices they paid compared with the prior year had made their financial situation worse.
In Oregon, high unemployment is partly to blame.
According to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Oregon’s unemployment rate was 5.0% in August 2025, higher than the national rate of 4.3%, and has been climbing steadily for more than two years. The rate has been influenced by increasing layoffs and an overall cooling off of the state’s labor market. Oregon unemployment rate is higher than every state in the Pacific Northwest., including Alaska, Idaho, Montana, and Washington. .Too many Oregonians are also working less than they’d prefer, leading to a rising so-called “underemployment rate”.
Oregon’s economy also relies heavily on service, retail, and tourism jobs , many of which are seasonal, that pay lower wages, even with Oregon’s mandated hourly wage levels, resulting in many hard working families falling below the income threshold for SNAP eligibility.
And Oregon’s economy is retreating, diminished from job losses at Intel, PacificSource, Wells Fargo, Nike, OHSU and even Powell’s Books, which has had four rounds of layoffs this year. Despite President Trump’s claim he is leading a resurgence of manufacturing in the US, U.S. manufacturing has contracted for seven straight months—the exact opposite of what Trump and other tariff proponents predicted.
Overall, the number of jobs U.S. employers have announced they would cut in 2025 has reached 1,099,500, up 65% from the first 10 months of 2024, according to Challenger, Gray and Christmas, a Chicago-based outplacement firm.
Aggressive outreach is another reason for high SNAP usage. Some see getting more people on SNAP as a good thing, but that’s questionable when food stamp enrollment has surged from 17.3 million individuals in 2001 to 41.7 million in 2024, and that in the same period enrollment as a percentage of the population has doubled from 6.1 % in 2001 to 12.3 % in 2024.
Oregon’s SNAP error rate in fiscal year 2024 was 14.06%, eighth-highest in the nation. That was down from error rates of 16.7$ in fiscal year 2023 and 22.9% for fiscal year 2022, but there’s still really no excuse for such high error rates.
If anything, then, increasing dependence on food stamps by Oregon’s population reflects a failure of the state’s economy in providing opportunities for its people and holding down taxes. That’s not a good thing.
In late February, Walmart announced it would be closing a batch of its US stores, including its two stores in Portland, OR at 4200 82nd Ave. SE and 1123 N Hayden Meadows on March 24, 2022. Dr. Multiple media have subsequently reported on the Portland closures, initially focusing on the loss of employee’s jobs and the company’s assertion that the closures were due to “several factors,” including profitability concerns.
The 82nd Ave. store will close to the public on 3/24/2023. All 379 employees at the facility will be terminated effective June 02, 2023. The Hayden Meadows store will close to the public on 3/24/2023. All 201 employees at the facility will be terminated effective June 02, 2023.
Fox said a Walmart spokesperson told Fox News Digital “…there is no single cause for why a store closes. We consider many factors, including current and projected financial performance, location, population, customer needs, and the proximity of other nearby stores when making these difficult decisions.”
But Fox chose to also highlight that the closure announcements for the Portland stores and multiple others across the countrycame “…just a few months after the Walmart CEO warned stores could close and prices could increase in light of sky-high retail crimes affecting stores across the country.”
“Theft is an issue. It’s higher than what it has historically been,” Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said in December on CNBC, Fox reported. “He added that “prices will be higher and/or stores will close” if authorities don’t crack down on prosecuting shoplifting crimes.”
Fox went on to note that Walmart’s announcement came after other Portland stores had closed, citing crime as a reason, including a Nike store that shut down following rampant shoplifting incidents and a Cracker Barrel that shut down with employees citing security issues. Fox reported one store that shut down in November 2022, Rains PDX, had posted a note on the shop’s doors after a string of break-ins saying, “Our city is in peril. Small businesses (and large) cannot sustain doing business, in our city’s current state. We have no protection, or recourse, against the criminal behavior that goes unpunished.”
The crime connection to the Portland Walmart closure was then also picked up on The NY Post. Yahoo and local TV stations affiliated with KPTV.
Next up was Texas Gov. Greg Abbot, no doubt stimulated by the crime connection, who jumped into the fray with a tweet: “All Portland Walmart stores to close in late March. This is what happens when cities refuse to enforce the rule of law. It allows the mob to take over…”
This spurred Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler to put in his two cents, Tweeting, “Governor Abbott, are the dozens of Walmart stores that have closed in Texas in recent years all communities that “refuse to enforce the rule of law?” The retail industry is changing and retail theft is a national issue.”
And of course. dozens of people responded to Wheeler’s Tweet.
What no media mentioned, however, is the diversity of Walmart’s workforce affected by the closures or the impact of the closures on Walmart’s customers, most of whom are the lower-income Portlanders progressive political leaders always claim to be so concerned about.
I don’t have a breakdown of the workforce at the two Portland stores, but a recent analysis of Walmart’s total workforce showed that56% were women, with 42% of those are part of management and 42% of the total workforce were people of color, with 31% of them part of management.
The only saving grace for these workers is that the hiring environment is strong. Weekly jobless claims have remained near or below the 2019 prepandemic average of about 220,000 for several months, even in the face of job cuts at larger employers in white-collar industries, particularly in technology, finance and real estate. In other words, it is still a tight labor market, so laid-off Walmart workers may have less difficulty finding work. That could change, however, as the Federal Reserve continues its aggressive effort to fight inflation and there are signs that the job market’s extreme tightness might be easing.
As for shoppers’ income, analyses by Business Insider, Kantar Media; and Statista show that, although more higher income Americans have been gravitating to Walmart groceries and other items in the current inflationary environment, more than a quarter of Walmart shoppers have an annual income of $25,000 or less and the next quarter have an annual income of just $25,000 – $49,900.
Walmart Shoppers by Income
$25,000 or less: 26.1%
$25,000 to 49,900: 26.8%
$50,000 to 74,900: 18.3%
$75,000 to 99,900: 11%
$100,000 or more: 17.4%
Why do lower income Americans shop at Walmart? Because generally they save more of their hard-earned dollars there, particularly on generics and Walmart’s store brands.
“…in general, most shoppers will find that groceries at Walmart can cost less overall, even for higher-end brands that will cost significantly more elsewhere, which means if you’re on a tighter budget, grocery shopping at Walmart can help you ensure your dollar goes further,” says Julie Ramhold, consumer analyst at DealNews.com.
And the savings can be significant.
A November 2022 Consumers’ Checkbook review of spending at Washington area grocery chains and stores concluded that a family that spends $250 per week at the supermarket, could save $2,080 per year by shopping at Walmart versus an all-store average.
In other words, the loss of these two Walmart stores is a bigger blow to Portland than the media has been saying. Politicians need to make note of that.
Only six in ten American workers could afford a surprise $400 expense, John Hope Bryant, founder of Operation Hope, an Atlanta-based non-profit, told the Wall Street Journal for a profile that ran today (July 25, 2020)
That $400 figure crops up everywhere like a persistent weed, portraying a large segment of Americans as living perilously on the edge of catastrophe.
“Some 40% of Americans would struggle to come up with $400 for an unexpected expense,” reported CNBC.
“In America right now today, almost half of Americans are a $400 unexpected expense away from complete upheaval,” Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) said on April 1, 2020 when announcing plans to introduce a Rent Relief Act.
“The gap between incomes and costs is so gaping that 40% of Americans can’t come up with $400 in an emergency,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said on May 9, 2019.
Those pushing the $400 story usually cite the Federal Reserve’s report, “Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2018.” The Report writers interviewed a sample of over 11,000 individuals—with an online survey in October and November 2018.
But the 40% figure is wrong.
People who just skimmed the initial text of the executive summary of the Report or relied on a text message, probably saw this: “Results from the survey show that many adults are financially vulnerable and would have difficulty handling an emergency expense as small as $400.”
If they read the Report itself further, however, they would have seen this: “If faced with an unexpected expense of $400, 61 percent of adults say they would cover it with cash, savings, or a credit card paid off at the next statement—a modest improvement from the prior year. Similar to the prior year, 27 percent would borrow or sell something to pay for the expense, and 12 percent would not be able to cover the expense at all.
So it’s not true, as Warren claimed, that 39% of people “can’t come up with” the money they’d need to handle this situation.
The Federal Reserve report makes clear that, although 4 in 10 adults “would have more difficulty covering such an expense,” many of them would be able to make it work by carrying a credit card balance or borrowing from friends and family.
Parents are often the source of financial help. One in 10 adults received some form of financial support during 2018 from someone living outside of their home. Over one-quarter of young adults received such support and among young adults with incomes under $40,000, nearly 4 in 10 received some support from outside their home.
Only 12% of adults “would be unable to pay the expense by any means,” the Federal Reserve Report concluded.
This doesn’t mean, however, that all is well in the American economy. Although many families reported that they had made substantial gains since the survey started in 2013, persistent disparities remained by race, education, and geography. Also, the report relied on interviews in 2018, well before COVID-19 struck the United States and massive economic dislocation occurred.
All the research done so far is showing that the economic fallout from COVID-19 is hitting lower-income adults harder.
The Pew Research Center has noted that The financial shocks of the outbreak have hit Hispanic and black Americans especially hard. When it comes to public health, black Americans appear to account for a larger share of COVID-19 hospitalizations nationally than their share of the population. One result is that, according to a July 2020 Rand Corp. survey, 40% of non-Hispanic black households and nearly 50% of Hispanic households reported problems paying their bills, compared with 21% of non-Hispanic white households.
We won’t know for quite a while what the public has to say to the Federal Reserve about how things are 2020, but it probably won’t be good.
If your total income in 2013 put you in the top 40 percent of Americans, you’ve likely gotten richer over the past 20 years, according to the Federal Reserve. If you are anybody else, your income, after adjusting for inflation, has probably gone down.
This trend will likely continue if the independent contractor business model enabled by technology multiplies. The winners will be the educated, specialized elite with full-time jobs and benefits who file W-2 tax forms; the losers will be independent contractors who file 1099-MISC tax forms.
On-demand worker company TaskRabbit CEO Leah Busque told TechCrunch, a technology news website, that the company’s goal is to “revolutionize the world’s labor force.” It and similar companies relying on independent contractors are accomplishing that if you consider the revolution to be back to the future of sweatshops.
Consider that under current law, independent contractors aren’t entitled to:
A minimum wage
Health benefits
Unemployment insurance
Retirement plans.
Workers’ compensation
Job protections
Uber and Lyft, both of which use independent contractors, are two of the best known 1099 companies, but others are sprouting like weeds. They include Homejoy (house cleaners), Handy (home cleaners and handymen), Postmates (couriers deliver goods locally), Spoonrocket (restaurant food delivery), Washio (laundry and dry-cleaning), DogVacay (pet sitting), Zirtual (personal assistants for entrepreneurs and professionals), Kitchensurfing (personal chefs) and TaskRabbit (personal tasks).
Washio allows customers to place laundry and dry-cleaning orders online and sends “ninjas” to pick up and deliver items. Washio doesn’t actually do any cleaning; it sends clothes to third party facilities. Independent contractors use their own vehicles, and cover their own costs, to go hither and yon picking up and dropping off clothes.
Online job source TaskRabbit asks people, “What can we take off your plate?” It offers “fully vetted Taskers to get the job done”, allowing the customer to “kick back and relax” and pay the bill online when the job is done. TaskRabbit makes its money by taking a 20% service fee off the payment.
TaskRabbit makes it clear that Taskers are independent contractors and that Taskrabbit is no more than “ a communications platform which enables the connection between Clients and Taskers.”
The company reinforces that message by saying it “…has no liability regarding the Service” and “…is not responsible for the performance of Users, nor does it have control over the quality, timing, legality, failure to provide, or any other aspect whatsoever of Tasks Clients, nor of the integrity, responsibility or any of the actions or omissions whatsoever of any Users.”
SherpaVentures, a venture capital firm, predicts that so-called “freelance marketplace” or “managed-service” labor models used by these companies are poised to transform industries like law, health care, and investment banking, and that fewer people will have traditional full-time or part-time jobs as a result.
According to Sherpa, “perpetual, hourly employment is often deeply inefficient for all parties involved, with the employer having to employ long-term workers for short-term needs and the worker missing the independence and productivity that come with freelancing and make workers happier.”
Futurist Thomas Frey, predicting 1099 nirvana, asserts that on-demand work will mean freedom. “…those who master the fine art of controlling their own destiny will rise to the inspiring new lifestyle category of “rogue commanders of the known universe,” he says.
A shift to independent contracting is more likely, however, to create a permanent underclass with meager, unreliable income, no benefits and few protections.
TaskRabbit CEO Busque says future work will be more flexible and “much more in the hands of what I like to call micro-entrepreneurs—people setting their own schedules, setting their own rates, saying what skills they have and what they’re good at.”
Valleywag, a Gawker Media tech blog, puts it a little differently: “If TaskRabbit Is the Future of Employment, the Employed Are Fucked”
ThinkingOregon 