California Food Stamp Usage Up 20%+ In One Year

According to the California Department of Social Services, the number of Californian families recieving food stamps has grown by over 20% in the last year. In April, 2008 there 940,000 families recieving government assitance for the food stamp programs and by April 2009 it was up to 1,150,000 families receiving benefits.

Click on Chart for a bigger image.

You can see that the increase in foodstamp usage correlates with the steady increase in the unemployment rate. And as the great recession continues to slug along, you can be sure that both California's foodstamp usage and number of unemployed workers looking for jobs will continue to increase.