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.
You mean there's no landscaping work in NY in December??? Oh no! That can't be!
Did she miss the Carter years?
The bunch of them are. It hasn't hurt them YET, so it's easy to sit back and laugh at the ones who are out of work and call them lazy.
I've been a professional computer consultant for over 18 years and have been out since March. I'm not even finding people willing to talk about interviews. And this is after getting a dozen calls a week during previous down times.
It's not the people that have the problem here. It's the economy. THERE AIN'T NO JOBS! Unless you wanna be a burger flipper.
What about child support from his ex-wife? Oh. Sorry. I forgot. Only men have to pay child support...
In this region I'm living in only one out of three jobs pays over $10 an hour and just as many pay minimum wage. Of course people making minimum wage usually qualify for food stamps, WIC, HUD and lots of other freebies. We should eliminate the minimum wage so people can work for $2.00 an hour.
I do too ---there's no way I can live on minimum wage and pay my property taxes alone which here are very high for just an average house ---partially because we have so many jobless people that still have kids to send to school and don't pay taxes themselves. I don't see how we're going to cut taxes with so many people out of work unless we let them die. Jobs are leaving this country, for some reason people think it's good for us not to have jobs in the US.
I don't watch Frasier, so I wouldn't know.
Sorry, women do have to pay child support. There have been quite a few cases. General rule is that non-custodial parent pays child support. At least in my state this is so, maybe New York is different.
a.cricket
Ummm... Could it be that he is actually an American citizen with a family and responsibilities, and not some illegal living in a garage? Just accepting any job, at any wage (as some suggest) doesn't do anything to solve people's financial problems
There are of course many people who are unemployed and actively seeking work. Many of these people have more than adequate access to credit, and are probably holding out for salaries and/or positions that they probably aren't qualified for. They either reject or don't seek jobs that they don't believe are good enough for them, for whatever reason, and instead live off their Amex or Home Equity Line. Not all of course: some are genuinely productive and out of work, but it certainly isn't the entire 6%.
Yep. When profits are down you hire as cheap as you can, (actually you do this when profits are up too). Bottom line is that something is worth what someone else is willing to pay for it not just what you are willing to sell it for. That is true of everything including labor.
I have a friend who will not take a job that pays less then $15.00 an hour. She has been unemployed for over a year now. I have steered a few jobs her way that pay $11-$12. She won't even consider them. She says that she is worth $15.00 an hour. I have no doubt that she is. But in this area and in her field and with her skills they aren't paying $15.00 an hour. And the longer you are out of work the less likely they are to hire you. Especially considering that she is an older lady with health problems.
a.cricket
But, eventually, is it not true that even the burger flippers will disappear, if there is no one around with the money to eat at Mac's? The old saying about an ebbing tide lowering all boats seems to be true. If we become a society of insurance salesmen and lawyers suing the insurance salesmen, what happens when the lawyers put the last insurance saleman out of business, or, even if they don't, when we've sold all the insurance to each other that we can afford? Because of this, I've always questioned the theory that a transition to a "service economy" is nothing to worry about, because for a "service economy" to work, you always need something around that needs and can pay for "service". I'm not saying I believe its a zero-sum game, but there seems to be a need for a mix of relatively healthy and diverse sectors to grease the rails of a sustainable economy, with each contributing at least at some minimum level to the overall mix. Once a sector drops below that minimum level, everyone else seems to be dragged down. Big duh there, I know, but I'm not a trained economist...
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