Posted on 12/07/2002 4:41:36 AM PST by sarcasm
Unemployed for two years, David Gray of Kearny grabbed the chance to earn $16 an hour shoveling snow at Giants Stadium on Friday.
"I'm a solid Republican," said Gray, a former telephone technician whose unemployment benefits have run out. "President Bush? Well, I love him to death, but he's got to do something domestically. I need a job."
At Gray's side was James McGovern, a friend from Kearny and another exile from the battered telecom industry. "I figured I could get some money for the holidays," said McGovern.
McGovern was laid off from his job building cellphone tower foundations in February. He hasn't been able to find work since.
"I'll take anything as long as I'm making more than $13 an hour," he said.
He has applied for jobs installing telephone systems and doing roofing, with no luck. Today he'll take the test to become a Hudson County firefighter.
"I was thinking about becoming a fireman, and since opportunity is knocking, I'm unemployed, I'll take the test and see if I can get in," McGovern said.
The percentage of Americans who are unemployed jumped last month, from 5.7 percent to 6 percent, the U.S. Labor Department reported Friday. The November rate, a seven-month high, is a sign that the economy's recovery remains lukewarm. Economists had expected a smaller rise.
"These are disappointing numbers," said Joseph Seneca, a Rutgers economist who is head of the state Council of Economic Advisors. "We're not going backward, but we're not going forward much either."
U.S. companies cut 40,000 jobs in November, the most since nine months ago, when 165,000 jobs were cut. Economists had forecast modest job growth for last month.
"It's a reflection of caution on the part of businesses," said Martin Mauro, manager of financial economics at Merrill Lynch. "They're still not confident that sales are improving enough to hire people."
New Jersey's unemployment numbers for November will not be available until Dec. 17, but in October, the state's rate was 5.5 percent. Like the national rate, New Jersey unemployment has risen in the past year, but it has consistently been lower than the national rate for most of the last three years.
"There are just people out here stuck, very much stuck" in unemployment, said Marlena Lechner, director of vocational services for Jewish Family Services in Teaneck.
"Employers have the upper hand, and they're being very, very choosy. People who are not in their 20s, who don't have that fresh, young look, get pushed down in the pile," Lechner said.
"The kind of talent I'm seeing out there today, I'm boggled that they're not finding jobs. Good résumés, good backgrounds, yet they're not being seen."
Two weeks ago, David Toung of Jersey City lost his job as a Wall Street analyst specializing in telecommunications, a deeply troubled industry. He had been in the job for two years, in the field for six years.
"I don't think I was too shocked," Toung said. "It's been a very difficult sector, and a lot of my colleagues at other firms lost their jobs."
He's been making calls every day, looking for work. He hopes to stay in the same industry.
"You take your skills and look for the next opportunity," he said.
The 200 men cleaning up Giants Stadium for today's Army-Navy game represented the spectrum of the state's unemployed.
Dave Gustafson of Basking Ridge, for example, is just completing his first week without a job. Working in telecommunications security and Web page design, Gustafson lost his regular paycheck Tuesday. It's his first time among the unemployed, and he's thinking of heading back to school.
That's not an option for James Battle, a construction worker from Newark. He's a single parent with three children.
"But I'll do anything," he said, "really anything, because I've got three little girls to support."
Gerald Santiago of Woodridge, who once worked for a courier service, has struggled through a series of low-paying jobs. The courier service, Santiago said, was dependent upon clients hurt by the attacks on the World Trade Center.
"There are some jobs out there," he said, "but they don't pay enough."
Jay Goldberg, a lanky elevator installer from Westchester, rested on his shovel and explained that he had been out of work for three months.
"I've been taking short-term painting jobs, just anything I can get," he said.
For Sam Rizzo of Kearny, the Giants Stadium job "gets me through another day." A construction worker and landscaper, Rizzo said, "When I heard about this gig, I shot right down here."
Devon Jones of Lodi, an unemployed construction worker, has tried to find jobs through temporary agencies.
"But you sit there for hours and get nothing," he said.
Dorothy Boston, a staffing consultant at JSP Associates in Hasbrouck Heights, said she hasn't seen people this desperate in her 30 years working in human resources.
"The résumés we see coming in are for jobs that people are not even qualified for," Boston said. "They're not even in the ballpark. They just want to work."
For example, a recent applicant for a sales job in the auto industry had no sales experience, as required, but "said that he loves cars, so he knows he could do a good job," Boston said.
"Now companies are looking for people with five specific skills, and they want all five," said Shawn Mulligan, district vice president for Robert Half International Inc., a California-based staffing company with four New Jersey offices. "Three years ago, they might have hired someone with three of those skills."
Employers may be reluctant to hire in part because of uncertainty over whether the U.S. will go to war with Iraq, said Carl Van Horn, director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers. Among other issues, a war could increase the price of oil, driving up companies' costs.
As a result, Van Horn said, managers are delaying decisions on questions such as, "Should I buy another piece of equipment or bring in another 10 or 100 workers?"
The unemployment rate is generally considered a lagging indicator - telling the economy's current or recent state, rather than where it's headed. That's because employers often wait till after sales have improved to hire more workers, said Van Horn.
But higher unemployment is also a troubling omen for the future, because it may slow consumer spending, which accounts for about two-thirds of the economy, Mauro, the Merrill Lynch manager, said.
"If you don't have income to spend or you're worried about losing your job, you're going to be reluctant to make big commitments," he said.
... "President Bush? Well, I love him to death, but he's got to do something domestically. I need a job" ...Apparently he was reading from his Democrat talking points. The next words out of his mouth were probably "this whole war on Iraq thing is big distraction, I think, from our domestic [woes | crises | troubles | ].
... All that will soon be left are $7.00 /hour service jobs ...Most of the millionaires in this country work service jobs--financial services, mainly. And our manufacturing sector has been in decline since the '30s relative to the rest of the economy--it's now aobut six percent of our GDP, yet we have the largest, strongest economy in the world. Go figure.
Hmmm........
I think I have identified why this guy does not have a job. There are guys out there who will take any job at $12 an hour and even at $11 an hour. So if you were hiring who would you hire?
Wake up people! It isn’t a sellers market out there anymore.
And yeah, I do understand, I lost my job too. I might lose the one I have found since within the next few months, the company is struggling.
a.cricket
Now, where is this fellow's self-esteem? ...Why stop at merely an hourly demand? Why not insist that he'll accept any postion as long as it pays over 7 digits annually,....perks to be negotiated. /sarcasm off
"He has applied for jobs installing telephone systems and doing roofing, with no luck. "
Does this mean he applied for a job to have intercourse with the roof? Roof is a noun. The installation or construction of a roof has been described as 'roofing a building'. This exemplifies how too many people use 'doing' as a substitute for a verb expressing a meaning.
e.g Too many folk are doing the doing thing!
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