COVID-19 EMPLOYMENT DISRUPTION & MISSING MEAL ANALYSIS UPDATE at a Granular Level Across Florida 

Feeding Florida commissioned Mari Gallagher Research & Consulting Group (MG) – a firm with expertise in hunger, the economy, and statistical models – to conduct a COVID-19 employment disruption analysis at small geographic units across Florida as a pathway to understand and address the additional need for charitable feeding during this crisis. The analysis estimates how many additional workers have or soon will become unemployed or furloughed without pay as a result of the pandemic. Results are pinpointed for over 11,400 hyper local areas across Florida. Additionally, Feeding Florida commissioned an update of MG’s Meal Deficit Metric model to account for the employment disruption of COVID-19, also at these same small pinpointed areas.

Watch our website for more information: maps for every county and a Florida-wide Excel spreadsheet to be released soon. The original Meal Deficit Metric results are also available on our Projects/Public Reports page.

This work would not be possible without the support and leadership of Feeding Florida. We thank Feeding Florida, especially its Executive Director, Robin Safley, who has been tireless in her disaster relief efforts and her commitment to use evidence-based information to identify and help those in need. Her insights and feedback have been enormously helpful. Learn more about Feeding Florida hereWe also thank and acknowledge Feeding Florida’s board Chair, Sandra Frank (All Faiths Food Bank), and its Vice Chair, Richard LeBer (Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida), for also providing valuable feedback and encouragement at critical junctures. Finally, our analysis benefited from recent employment analyses by other research organizations, specifically the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and the National Bureau of Economic Research. We thank them for their efforts. 

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