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.
I know. I live in an area that was promised great and wonderful things from NAFTA and instead was declared an economic disaster area (so we get millions of federal dollars now) soon after NAFTA went into effect and things just keep getting worse. Some of those former garment workers used to make $8 an hour ---not alot but it let them be middle class. Some have managed to find jobs at $5.15 an hour but very many are living off the government and will be forever. Things didn't go as promised. They were to get 18 months job retraining so they could be computer programmers and other good things but unfortunately most couldn't even learn English in 18 months. So it's good I guess they aren't working anymore because labor is cheaper in other places.
Next week I will no longer be counted as unemployed. No, I didn't get a job, it's just that my unemployment benefits expire. At that point I no longer count as unemployed for statistical purposes. I will become a "nonperson".
There are about 80,000 official unemployed in Silicon Valley. The San José Mercury News had 10 ads for engineers last week. Do the math...
Ironically if they can't even speak English that means that the jobs that they lost probably moved right to where they were from in the first place.
Having lived in foreign countries I know that the first thing you should do is learn the language. And if an employer has a choice between someone he can communicate with and someone that he needs an interpreter to communicate with he is going to go for the one that he can talk to.
Is it good that they are out of work? Of course not, but it is not wholly NAFTA's fault. They failed to acquire a basic skill needed for them to be hired in other industries. People who are functionally illiterate are also having a hard time getting hired in for good paying jobs.
a.cricket
NOPE.
They are just showing that there is no one available in the USA to fill the position, thus justifying the issuance of yet another H1B visa.
200 years ago, 90%-95% of the work force was engaged in agriculture. After the invention of the gasoline engine, tractor, combine, etc less than 5% feed the whole US and a good chunk of the rest of the world.
When railroads came along, one big factory could supply manufactored goods to the whole country, putting lots of small crastsmen out of work. When containerized shipping, faxes, and cheap telecom came along, it became workable to move manufactoring to where labor is cheapest
The next stage will be robotic manufactoring, where computerized machinery will be able to assemble things more cheaply than even a third-world worker. Manufactoring then will happen where a factory can be planted, and where it won't be hassled by taxes and environmental and other government regulations. The people with money will then be those who create or own intellectual property
You certainly wouldn't make $50 an hour mowing grass here because an illegal will do that for $50 a week or less even.
IMPROPER SPELLING ALERT!
Grammer=Grammar...
... let he who is without sin .... .... ....
Exactly...you forgot oil rig work, janitorial, and many others. The problem is huge and overwhelming.
Sad. But I know of several other single parents who have done the same.
Best of luck to you.
a.cricket
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