It is 8am at the beginning of a working day in the South Bronx; it is freezing and Peta Cruz, a 74-year-old retired high school teacher, has been waiting in line for more than an hour.

But on the eve of Thanksgiving, Ms Cruz, who emigated from Puerto Rico when she was 17 years old and who has lived in New York ever since, is not queueing for the pre-Christmas sales, for which America is famous. Ms Cruz is queueing for free food handouts.

Outside St Crispin's Friary in East 156th Street, about 200 people in thick coats have already curled around the entire block waiting for the friars to dispense about 1,200 turkeys to feed Americans struggling to make ends meet.

Across New York City, churches and charities have described being overwhelmed by demand for food handouts. Five blocks away, Jilly Stephens, the executive director of City Harvest, a food rescue organisation, is packing collard greens into plastic bags to hand out to another queue of hungry New Yorkers.

“We are reporting an increase in the number of unemployed people and many more seniors and children. We are seeing a lot of families where the breadwinner has lost employment. Everybody here is struggling to put food on the table.”

Few should be surprised that Americans are queueing for food. As the US dives headlong into one of the worst recessions since the 1930s, unemployment is rising quickly. About 240,000 people are losing their jobs a month. Washington believes that America will be lucky if unemployment peaks at 9 per cent. In the 1930s, President Roosevelt launched a programme where people on low incomes were given vouchers that they could exchange for groceries. But as Ms Stephens says: “If you are a family of three and your household income is more than $15,000 a year, you don't qualify. That is nothing. We estimate that that family needs to have around $45,000 a year to be self-sufficient in New York.”

Down the road, Brother Giles agrees: “We do this every year on the day before Thanksgiving but this year the requests and inquiries have come earlier and there have been far more of them.”

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