Coping with soaring prices for the basics
Steven James, 43, works in finance, has multiple cellphones clipped to his belt and projects the air of a hardworking, successful sort of guy. And yet there he was last week, buying day-old bread at the Oroweat thrift store in South Pasadena.
"Food's just so expensive," James said. "It's going up faster than salaries." He said he now seeks bargains like day-old bread wherever he can find them.
It seems as if the cost of everything is outpacing people's pay these days. Gas, the rent, utility bills -- and now food.
According to the Labor Department, the average cost of groceries is climbing at an annual rate of about 5%, the sharpest increase in 18 years. Average weekly earnings are rising at an annual rate of 3.3%.
This disparity has resulted in significantly higher customer traffic at bakery thrift outlets, employees say, as well as a surge in people turning to food banks.
"It's an alarming situation," said Michael Flood, chief executive of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, which distributes free groceries to about 600,000 people countywide via a network of 875 religious entities and nonprofit groups. "The trends are not good."
The number of people arriving at food pantries is up as much as 10% over the last few months from a year earlier, he said.
Flood noted that other necessities -- gas, rent, utilities -- typically offer no price breaks. So after working-class families pay fixed expenses, that leaves whatever is left for food. And these days, that's often not enough.
Flood said a particularly troubling trend was that more people are showing up at food banks who don't fit the usual profile of lower-income families trying to make ends meet.
He said free groceries are now being sought by middle-class people who may have lost their jobs or experienced some other economic upheaval.
"We're worried," Flood said. "We don't necessarily have the supply of food to handle this increase."
He said donations were still coming from supermarkets, restaurants and other facets of the food industry. But supplies from the Department of Agriculture are down as much as 60% because the government, like consumers, can't afford to buy as much food as it once could, and because food stockpiles have fallen.
The food bank estimates that more than 1 million L.A. County residents, or about 10% of the population, can be categorized as "food insecure" -- lacking regular access to sufficient amounts of food.
