With 22.4 million households using food stamps, fully 15 percent of the American population is on the program. The costs, at $6.025 billion for the month, are just off the all-time record though the average monthly benefit per person has declined modestly to $132.96.

While the unemployment rate actually has come down from the 10 percent readings it showed in 2009, the amount of participants for the SNAP program has soared.

There were fewer than 31 million people on food stamps as recently as November 2008, but an aggressive effort from President Obama's administration has helped build participation, with the total increasing by 44 percent since the president took office in January 2009.

Liberal commentator Alan Colmes, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece Tuesday, cites the expansion as a key achievement of the Obama administration, as participants "only stay on it an average of nine months" and circulate $1.73 back into the economy for each food stamp dollar spent.

But if Cardillo is correct and the proliferation of food stamp recipients represents underemployment and wage stagnation, that could signal difficult times ahead for reducing entitlement spending. Cardillo projects just 90,000 new jobs were formed in August, below consensus for 125,000 and the unemployment rate (learn more) level at 8.3 percent.

Citigroup economist Steven C. Wieting, in a recent analysis, said there are more than 3 million Americans still without work who lost their jobs following the financial crisis but did not work in the housing-related industriesthat suffered most.

Consequently, he said in an interview, recovery will be slow in coming as those noncyclical job losses will be more difficult to remedy.