Abby Lane, Fellow

Today’s release of January jobs data brought a bit of mixed news to the story of the recovery. This month, women gained nearly two out of every three jobs added to the economy, but public sector job losses continued and unemployment rates were essentially flat.

The good news this month is continued steady job growth – 157,000 jobs were added to the economy in January, about two-thirds of which went to women. The number isn’t as good as the previous few months, but shows that slowly, but surely, the economy, driven by private sector growth, continues to add jobs. The bad news in the jobs numbers came once again in the public sector: in January, public sector losses cut into private sector gains. Women disproportionately bore these public sector losses in January, mirroring a trend we’ve seen in the recovery overall.

Last week, New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof, a writer I respect and admire enormously, wrote a surprisingly critical piece of the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. He detailed the stories of a few families, arguing that SSI “condemned [disabled children] to a life of poverty on the dole.”

I have a few stories of my own about disabled adults on SSI, and trust me, they need it. Between 2008 and 2009, I spent a year as a case manager at a homeless shelter in Chicago. In that time, I worked with many guests and clients of the shelter who had mental and/or physical disabilities that prevented them from working. And when you can’t work – it’s hard to have enough income to let you meet basic needs. That’s where assistance programs came in.

One of my clients at the shelter was a man who had been on SSI since he was a child. He had been a part of the program that serves disabled children and had transitioned into the adult program after turning 18. Then in his late 20s, I worked with him as he went through the routine evaluation conducted to check disability status, or check that the person is still in need of SSI. This man wasn’t someone who was trying to cheat the system – he suffered from a mental illness, was unable to work, and as an adult had to continue to prove his need for SSI. His meager SSI check was what paid his rent, bought food, and got him around the city to appointments.