[Anchor intro: As if losing your job wasn’t enough, finding a new one is getting even harder. The pool of Americans looking for a job is growing by the day as the economy heads further into a recession. Democracywise reporter Racquel Asa tells us how the sinking economy is hurting workers nationally and locally.]
In these hard times, Katherine Lee is starting to get desperate.
“I just laid off from my job of seven years on October the 3rd of this year. It’s difficult going from a lot of money to living on a little bit of money now.” (Katherine Lee, recently unemployed)
For 10 years, Lee of Syracuse worked as a billing agent for the Syracuse Community Health Center. But now she’s become a statistic. She’s one of more than 10 million Americans who are unemployed.
Nationally, the number of unemployed is the highest it’s been since March 1994. In this year alone the nation’s unemployment grew by the hundreds of thousands.
Take a look at these numbers:
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In October, the national unemployment rate was 6.5 percent — or 10 million, 800-thousand Americans without jobs.
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That’s up from 4.8 percent nationally a year ago.
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In the Syracuse area, the October 2008 unemployment rate was 5.6 percent — or 18,600 workers without jobs.
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That’s up from 3.9 percent in October 2007.
With the steadily growing number of unemployed, more and more people are looking to agencies for employment help and to the federal government for money while they search for a job.
Take for example, CNY Works.
CNY Works is a local not-for profit that provides free help for the unemployed. Through computer workshops, resume building and job bank searching, CNY Works re-trains and tries to give the unemployed new job skills to re-enter the workforce.
Last year, CNY Works helped 20 to 25 new clients a day, says Lorie Wilson of the non-profit agency. On any given weekday now, more than a 120 people pack into CNY Works. To put that in perspective, a year ago that’s the same number of people the agency would have helped in a month and a half. And Wilson says the types of clients are also changing.
“There is a wide diversity of individuals that are coming. I think that has a lot to do with the changing demographics in Central New York like the types of businesses that are leaving in all industries.” (Lorie Wilson of CNY Works. )
But the flood of Central New Yorkers looking for help is also growing in other areas. The number of people filing for unemployment has also jumped in Onondaga County and in the state as a whole.
Consider these numbers from that state’s Department of Labor:
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In New York state, the number of people filing for unemployment benefits rose by 26. 2 percent — from 73,904 to 100,20 — between October 2007 and October 2008. That’s 26,297 more people – or 26.2 percent – filing for unemployment insurance.
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In Central New York, the increase was 17. 1 percent — up from 4,189 to 5,054.
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In Onondaga County, the increase was 15.5 percent — up from 2,106 to 2,493.
The growing reliance on unemployment benefits is putting immense stress on the state’s budget. New York already is $52 billion in the red and facing deep budget cuts, based on numbers from the state’s Comptrollers office.
Kevin Jack is an analyst with the state’s labor department. He has analyzed the state’s labor market for more than 12 years. When the nation suffers, he says, New York is even harder hit because Wall Street and the financial sector in the city takes a longer time to rebound.
“If history repeats itself, New York will be in worse financial shape than the nation since it has traditionally taken a longer time for the state to get out of a recession,” (Kevin Jack, labor analyst for the New York state Department. of Labor)
For newly unemployed Katherine Lee, the growing unemployment complicates her desperation. She is 43 years old and facing new challenges in the job market.
“I never thought that this economy would be like this. It’s a lot harder now because you have a whole lot more competition. You have people who have master’s degrees that are trying to get entry-level jobs just to get employment.” (Katherine Lee, recently unemployed)
Still, she says, she doesn’t have much choice but to keep looking.
“In an interview, I’m just going to put my best foot forward and hoping that gets me into the employment stage.” (Katherine Lee, recently unemployed)
For Democracywise, I’m Racquel Asa.
(Racquel Asa is a graduate student in broadcast journalism.)
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