For the jobless, recovery is an empty promise
Though the economy is rebounding, jobs still in short supply
Richard Mehls said he took two sick days during his 30 years working as a machinist at a factory in Akron and he had hoped to retire from the plant. Instead, he was laid off in December, at 56.
Yvonne Hairston, who lost her job at Erie Community College in February 2008, gets medical care at a free clinic and haggles with her creditors to get permission to pay some bills late.
And Aaron Franklin lost his job in environmental remediation in July. He paints houses and businesses when he can find the work and visits an opportunity center to jump-start his job search — always motivated by 3-year-old Aaron Jr.
"I get up every day, and I look at my son and I say, "You will have something better than today,' " Franklin said. "I can't give up, because if I do, I'm giving up on him, too."
Experts say the economy is recovering, but that's not helping people like Mehls, Hairston and Franklin.
The region and the nation as a whole continue to shed jobs, with the official U.S. unemployment rate topping 10 percent in October for the first time since the early 1980s.
The local unemployment rate, at 8.3 percent, is the highest recorded for September since 1990, according to the state Labor Department.
Erie, Niagara, Chautauqua, Cattaraugus and Allegany counties lost 16,800 jobs between September 2008 and 2009.
And that number doesn't include people who have given up looking for a job, or who took a job that doesn't pay enough or that doesn't provide health benefits.
Estimates put that figure at 17.5 percent, or one out of every six workers, nationally.
"The reality is there are more people looking for fewer jobs," said Colleen W. Cummings, director of employment and training at the Buffalo Employment and Training Center.
People who are out of work are feeling stressed, scrambling to pay their bills and keep their homes while they go on job interviews and fill out countless job applications.
Social service agencies such as the Central Referral Service's 211, Crisis Services and the Food Bank of Western New York are reporting an increase in requests for assistance.
These new clients are people who are not used to being out of work, officials said, and they haven't previously needed help.
"It's really a broad cross-section. It's homeowners. It's renters. It's people in transition. There's a lot of pain and misery out there because of lack of economic opportunity," said Brenda W. McDuffie, Buffalo Urban League president and CEO.
The situation is so bleak that President Obama Thursday announced plans to host a jobs summit at the White House in December, though it's uncertain what impact it will have.
"We've got to get the jobs back. When we get the jobs back, it will all trickle down," said Marylou Borowiak, the Food Bank's president and CEO.
Making adjustments
Hairston, a relentlessly cheerful Buffalo resident, first talked to The Buffalo News in February.
Since then, she did get a six-month job as an administrative assistant for an employment agency.
"I ended up liking it," Hairston said, but she knew it wasn't a permanent position.
Her husband, David, still has his job with Group Ministries, but they have had to adjust to living on one income.
Her phone rang while a reporter was visiting her.
"Oh, that's a bill collector," Hairston said, and she didn't pick up.
When People Inc. called a short while later, she answered. The agency asked if she was still interested in a job opening, and Hairston set up an interview.
"I just can't make room for me to be pessimistic," Hairston said at her kitchen table, a thick folder of job-search materials open in front of her.
Agencies that try to help local residents find a job, hold on to their home, keep their utilities on and get enough food for their families say they are getting more requests for help.
The 211 hotline received 23 percent more calls for assistance in August and September of this year than it did over the same two months in 2008.
Crisis Services offers a program for people who may be on the verge of homelessness because they are behind on their mortgage, their rent or their utilities.
The program received 826 calls in the first nine months of 2008. Over the same period this year, it recived 2,208 calls — a 167 percent increase.
"[Losing a job] is a family crisis," said Paul J. Parise, director of the Niagara County Employment & Training Center in Niagara Falls. "It's like going through a divorce. It's a horrific experience."
Many of the people contacting these agencies have a track record of employment and, in some cases, are embarrassed at having to ask for help.
One professional-looking man stopped by an area employment center and kept his composure for most of a meeting but finally broke down in tears and said he was living in his car, said Michael Weiner, president of the United Way of Buffalo & Erie County. Weiner heard this account from the staffer who met with the man.
"The unemployment rate, as it goes up, it touches more people and a different cohort of individuals. Some of these folks have never lost a job before," Weiner said.
Insulated employers
Mehls, the Gasport man who lost his Akron factory job last year, was at the Niagara County employment center recently for a Job Club meeting.
The sessions offer help with job-search skills, networking opportunities and a kind of group therapy for people looking for work.
The soft-spoken man said he lost his job when the Strippit factory, formerly owned by Houdaille, went from about 70 employees down to 30.
The region's manufacturing sector is shrinking, and Mehls worries the companies that are hiring may not be willing to invest in someone his age.
For now, he receives the maximum unemployment insurance payment, and his wife has her job as a school bus driver.
"We don't have a very large mortgage payment," said Mehls, who relies on his faith to motivate him. "We've been making ends meet. We don't over-budget ourselves."
Estimates show there are six unemployed people applying for each job opening today, both locally and nationally.
Most job applications these days are completed by e-mail or through an online form and companies often don't provide a phone number for follow-up contact, job seekers said.
"Now the employers insulate themselves so they don't even have to talk to people anymore," said Franklin, the environmental remediation employee.
Franklin signed up for classes in environmental remediation at the University at Buffalo's Educational Opportunity Center because he wanted to get better work than the seasonal lawn-care job he held.
He couldn't afford his rent or the payments on his truck on the $150 a week in unemployment benefits he was receiving at the time, so he got evicted and his vehicle was repossessed.
Still, Franklin finished the program in May, got a job doing asbestos abatement and other work in June — and he got laid off in July. Now he wants to start his own business.
"I don't want any other person to have this much control over my life," Franklin said. "You can't depend on a job anymore."
"Jobless recovery'
Congress and the president have repeatedly extended unemployment benefits, most recently boosting the maximum from 79 weeks to 93 weeks for anyone who applied before June 15, the state Labor Department reported.
Those who first applied after June 15 are eligible for up to 26 weeks. The amount is based on the recipient's prior earnings, with a maximum of $430 a week, said Michelle Duffy, a department spokeswoman.
The financial crisis, however, is prompting state governments to cut spending and making it harder for not-for-profits to raise money from donors.
The Central Referral Service 211 center, for example, reduced its hours from seven days a week to five days a week because of government cutbacks, said Doug Frank, executive director of the program.
"It's trying to help more people with less resources," Frank said.
Experts, however, say the economy is recovering.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Friday closed near its 13-month high, and the U.S. economy grew 3.5 percent in the third quarter, July through September.
But companies aren't hiring at the prerecession pace.
The U.S. Labor Department's Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey said employers advertised about 2.5 million job openings in September, down from a peak of 4.8 million openings in June 2007.
"The duration of unemployment has been much longer in this recession than during previous recessions," said Richard Deitz, a senior economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in Buffalo.
Such a "jobless recovery" is driven by the fact that capital remains tight, companies don't want to produce new inventory until they are assured people will start spending money again and they won't hire new employees until that changes.
"You have to be very conservative in expanding your work force and expanding production," said John Slenker, a regional economist for the state Labor Department.
Still, Maria Torres simmers with confidence.
Doing it for the kids
Torres, who is 33 and a mother of five, is in the process of getting a divorce.
The native of Puerto Rico most recently had a job as a supervisor at a retail clothing store.
After switching her schedule to part time, her hours were eliminated in October.
Torres, an East Side resident, now is receiving unemployment benefits, working on occasion as a security guard and caring for her mother and an aunt who both were diagnosed with breast cancer.
She is working with Catholic Charities and Hispanics United of Buffalo to get financial aid to pay for college courses in psychology or social work.
"I'm the kind of person, when I say I'm going out there to get a job, I always come back with a job," Torres said. "I've got to do it for my kids. They've got their mommy. They don't have anybody else."
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