News Cut Category Archive: The Unemployed series

The Unemployed: Chris Johnson

Posted at 4:11 PM on October 27, 2009 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: The Unemployed series

Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed persons has increased by 7.6 million to 15.1 million. In Minnesota last month, 4,000 people gave up their quest for work. The unemployment rate isn't a number. It's individuals with life stories to tell. Here's one.

In the three years since Chris Johnson of White Bear Lake has held a "permanent" full-time job, she's encountered the reality of today's hiring process. "Human Resources is neither humane, nor resourceful," she told me today. "I can have some empathy. Those people are deluged with stuff. It's a numbers game."

But for today's job hunters, they rarely get to meet the people. "It's a black hole," she says. Companies tell prospective employees they have to apply for jobs online. "You go through this vortex that just asks questions. It asks if I have a college degree but there's nowhere to indicate I'm only 8 credits short." Maybe you'll hear back from a company, but probably not.

When a person doesn't get a job via this system, "there's no way to follow up or do a post mortem," she says. It makes it difficult to find out what to change when the next prospective job comes along.

Johnson lost her job as a volunteer and event manager (she jokes that she was a "pledge goddess") for Twin Cities Public Television in 2006. She helped coordinate membership drives. She's looking for work in marketing, community relations and has been focusing recently on event management and voice-over work.

"I thought I'd have a job by the end of the year (2006)," she says. "I keep hearing, 'You've got a great resume.' I've followed the rules -- networking, researching, calling, answering ads -- but nothing seems to click. I can't crack the system"

She's had part-time and temporary work since then; "enough to keep the wolf away from the door." But she's hardly an example of the destitution that often comes from long-term unemployment. "I live quite frugally and had saved/invested some money over the years." But she's got two mortgages on her White Bear Lake home, and one on a house in Little Marais that she rehabbed with her aging father (an experience she wouldn't trade for a job). She's been dipping into her retirement savings to get by, she gets a couple hundred dollars a week in unemployment, and her health care plan is a simple one. "I pray," she says.

She describes a litany of failed job interviews, including "the 20-something in pointed high heels" who icily looked her over when she showed up for an interview after a warm exchange over the phone. She's 52 and, apparently, sounds younger over the phone.

She says she overwhelmed a young man in a recent interview. "I don't think he expected to be interviewing his mother," she said, acknowledging "there is a bias" against the older work applicant.

"I like to think the universe is going to give me what I need," she says, then amends that statement to point out that so far, it has. "After three years, I suppose I should be living in a cardboard box, but the sun came out today, there's food on the table, and I'm finding a way to put gas in the car."

Unemployment, she points out, has allowed her to spend more time with her aging parents -- now both in their 90s.

She's noticed an increase in job postings in the places she looks, but the technology required for job searching these days doesn't lend itself to high productivity. "I'm on LinkedIn, but I still don't really know what LinkedIn is," she says, "and I'm impatient." She says Twitter, for example, requires one to waste a lot of time in order to -- maybe -- make a connection that can lead to employment. "If I put in this effort, I want to see the result. I'm not seeing the result," she says.

Her advice for people who will soon be in her position? "Don't panic," she says. "Cry, scream, get it out of your system. Feel it. Live it. Put one foot in front of the other and if something doesn't work, try something else."

"It's a crapshoot," she says.

(See more in this series. If you'd like to share your story, contact me.)

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Check out the map below to read what people in MPR's Public Insight Network are telling us about the job climate around them. You can find other stories in this series here.

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The Unemployed: Aja Halvorson

Posted at 12:59 PM on September 28, 2009 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: The Unemployed series

Officially, 14.9 million people are unemployed. Thousands -- perhaps millions -- more have given up and are not counted. Last month alone, 466,000 people lost their job. They're not numbers; they're individuals with a story to tell. Here's one.

"Even if you don't know me, you know me," Aja Halvorson says. "I really do rub off on people." She's right. She's the poster child of many in her generation. She's looking to make a difference, she's gone back to school, but she's also struggling through the flotsam of foreclosure, unemployment, and bankruptcy.

"Oh my God, I should never been allowed to buy a house," Halvorson, 28, says. She had a $36,000 annual salary when she worked as a Web developer and project manager. But the St. Paul home she bought wasn't insulated and when her heating bill hit $400 a month in the winter of 2007-2008, she found herself living in only her dining room.

She took on a second job at United Parcel Service in Eagan, working there from 2-8 a.m., then working her day job until 6 p.m., and then sleeping until just after midnight, but when big financial service clients started dropping their business in a collapsing economy, her main employer dropped her in September 2008. Weeks earlier, it had required her to commute to a different office in Champlin, an office far enough away that she had to give up her second job and, finally, the keys to her house. Her $106,000 home is valued at about $36,000 now. It's still empty.

She asked about a severance package. She says her now-former boss laughed instead. She filed for unemployment, searched through online job listings but found that many of the jobs "were fake." Some companies ran recruitment ads just to look like they were busy, she said. But they weren't really hiring.

She moved in with her mother in Lakeville for a time, but has moved back into St. Paul and away from the isolation of the suburbs. She lives over a pizza shop owned by her sister's fiance ("it's insanely cheap") and occasionally helps out in the business.

Halvorson has taken a circuitous route to unemployment. She went to the University of Minnesota in the Sociology of Law, Criminology, and Deviance program. She wanted to be probation officer. But an internship in Apple Valley convinced her that wasn't for her. She says her co-workers were too jaded, and she didn't want to go through life seeing people in the middle of the day and wondering if they were on home detention.

Now she's taking courses at Inver Hills Community College and plans to transfer soon to Metro State University, in search of a teacher's certificate. There are no jobs in Minneapolis schools, so she's volunteering at a charter school and, apparently, making a difference. Last week she taught a girl how to use a ruler. The girl is 15.

"You need people on your side," she says. "You need an advocate. I know I'm making a difference. I'm there for the kids."

Her weekly $340 from unemployment ran out last week. She's in the middle of filing for bankruptcy. She says she once wondered what it would be like to lose everything, and now has lost much of it. But slowly. Unemployment here. Foreclosure there. "There's not a lot of time to grieve," she says.

"My demographic has been screaming for help," she says. "We make too much money to get it, we're single, and we don't have kids... There are a lot of people like me going through the same thing. We should be succeeding, and we're not."

(See more in this series. If you'd like to share your story, contact me.)

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Check out the map below to read what people in MPR's Public Insight Network are telling us about the job climate around them. You can find other stories in this series here.

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The Unemployed: Moira Webster-Larranaga

Posted at 11:03 AM on September 17, 2009 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Economy, The Unemployed series

New data today shows people in Minnesota have given up looking for work, even as the unemployment rate fell again in August. Officially, 14.9 million people are unemployed. Thousands -- perhaps millions -- more have given up and are not counted. Last month alone, 466,000 people lost their job. They're not numbers; they're individuals with a story to tell. Here's one.

Moira Webster-Larranaga, 41, of Burnsville, has seen layoffs from both sides. For 6 1/2 years, she was the human resources director at the Greater Minneapolis Crisis Nursery. HR people know how layoffs work since they're usually the ones who have to do the dirty work. "You just have to stay calm and expect them to be angry," she told me on Wednesday. "There's no sense beating around the bush."

It's tough, she said, knowing that a layoff is coming and not being able to tell anyone. She didn't know for sure that she was in the crosshairs, but her layoff last September didn't surprise her. The non-profit world was getting raked by the recession.

She worked in a temporary position until last March, but she's been looking for full-time HR work. She says she's applied for at least 70 positions and had one interview.

"I just got a message on September 11th for a job I applied for last March, saying the opening was being removed," she said. "When you get 600 resumes for one position, what can you do?"

Webster-Larranaga seems to have taken it in stride, possibly because of another message she got in July: "You've got cancer."

The six weeks she waited between her diagnosis and her surgery on August 24th "were hard," but she was prepared to be honest with any potential employer who called. None did.

Moira's husband is an engineer. Health insurance isn't a problem and, for the most part, it seems, neither is unemployment, a possibility they planned for in recent years. They didn't live a high lifestyle when times were booming. They each drive old cars, they haven't had to touch their long-term savings, there's still a salary in the house, and the bills are getting paid. An annual snowboarding vacation in Aspen this winter is probably out, however.

Moira collected the maximum unemployment benefit from the state after her job ended in March, but it ended when she underwent surgery. The state doesn't provide unemployment compensation when you're physically unable to work. There's always the concern that she now has a pre-existing condition in the eyes of a health insurance company, but it won't be an issue, she says, as long as she doesn't go without health insurance for 63 days, and her husband's job appears safe, she says, knocking on nearby wood.

She was unemployed twice before -- the last was during the 2001 recession. But this one is different. "I don't feel stigmatized this time," she said. Back then, she'd recently graduated from the University of St. Thomas with an MBA, and MBA's aren't supposed to be unemployed.

Now, the picture is different. "I'm less concerned about what my title is," she said. "When you get your MBA, your title is important." She says she's conflicted about whether to stay in the non-profit sector "I want to make more money than the non-profit sector typically pays, but I also want to know I'm making a difference." She says when she worked at the Crisis Nursery, she ended every day knowing that she'd done her part to ease the pain of child abuse and neglect.

She expects Thursday's unemployment data in Minnesota will show more people have joined her out of work. But she thinks companies will soon be confident enough to start hiring again. "I try to stay positive," she says. "It's just so boring being negative."

She admits to one panic attack since her unemployment began "when I realized I was labeled 'unemployed' and 'cancer patient' at the same time." If her economic analysis is correct, and the radiation she's soon to undergo does what it's expected to do, she'll likely lose both labels soon.

(Unemployed? Let me tell your story. Contact me.)

Check out the map below to read what people in MPR's Public Insight Network are telling us about the job climate around them. You can find other stories in this series here.

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Green shoots - Part 1

Posted at 5:08 PM on September 14, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: The Unemployed series

A few weeks ago, I interviewed John Armstrong of St. Paul for the News Cut series, "The Unemployed." He's been out of work since February.

He describes himself as "sickeningly optimistic," but even the most optimistic job-seekers in America can occasionally suffer the debilitating reality that the first question we're asked when we meet people is "what do you do?"

Armstrong looks for work. "I identify myself by the job I want," he told me over coffee this morning. "There's still a little bit of shame over being unemployed, but lots of people have been through it." At times over the last five months, he acknowledged, he's felt that maybe he hasn't been able to get a job because "I'm not good enough to be employed."

Today, John writes, he got a new job. He starts next Monday. "It is a great relief to be able to call an end to the job search," he said.

I'm looking for more people who are unemployed to profile. Perhaps it's a sign of improving times that volunteers have been slow to come by in recent weeks.

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The Unemployed: Rick Miller

Posted at 12:01 PM on September 8, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Economy, The Unemployed series

Today's employers can learn a few things from yesterday's employees. Rick Miller's lesson would be a simple one: When the job's filled, call or e-mail the applicants to let them know.

Miller, 52, of Stillwater, lost his job as a project manager/sales coordinator at a company in Circle Pines in January and he says he hasn't had a decent interview for a job in months, not since he almost got one in March. He'd survived the first round of interviews and the second one a week later went 2 1/2 hours -- on his birthday -- with three people and the company's owner.

"We'll get back to you on Friday," he said he was told. But no call came on Friday. He followed up with a phone call on Monday, but it wasn't returned. Over the next six weeks, he called with the same result. Finally, he gave up.

"How long would it have taken?" he asks. "Nobody has the common courtesy anymore."

It's another frustrating aspect of the frustration of the unemployed.

His $430 a week unemployment just ran out, but he considers himself one of the lucky ones. "It would be hard to be positive if you're the breadwinner," he says. "I'm lucky in my case. Otherwise, it'd be tough." His wife is an attorney with her own practice. The couple has some rental property in Hudson, which he has more time to work on. That's a good thing now that the most recent renters didn't pay rent for three months, "and left the place a total disaster."

He also gets up weekdays at 3 a.m. and hits the health club. "I have been on this type of schedule for 20-plus years. A good early-morning workout gets me ready for the day and gives me the energy to keep looking for work and also take on all of the other activities I am involved in."

But it's easier being chipper in a bad economy when the weather is good. He says it's going to be harder when winter comes and there's not as much around-the-house work to do.

In the meantime, he'll continue making dinner and networking for leads. He's tried social networking sites, such as LinkedIn, but he's not sure it's working. Still, he says "the mundane task of looking and keeping it all organized" helps keep him motivated. He applies for jobs and keeps track of his contacts. "I check back with them every two weeks and when eight weeks hits, I throw it out," he says. "If I keep at it, something is going to pay off."

His advice to those who might become unemployed? Try to negotiate fewer hours. He wishes he had. "See if there's any way they can keep you on," he says. "Then you can say, 'OK, in three months I'll be out of a job. I'll start looking now and I can be fussier.'" He's not being fussy now. He's applying for part-time positions. "Most of what's out there isn't paying anything," he says. And the rest aren't calling back.

(Unemployed? Let me tell your story. Contact me. See other posts in this series. )

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The Unemployed: Jon Joriman

Posted at 2:02 PM on September 2, 2009 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: The Unemployed series

The unemployment rate in the U.S. is expected to jump to 9.5 percent when it's released on Friday. Officially, 14.5 million people are unemployed. Thousands -- perhaps millions -- more have given up and are not counted. They're not numbers; they're individuals with a story to tell.

Jon Joriman, 34, of Little Canada, was asked, perhaps, the hardest question a job-seeker could be asked recently. He'd survived two rounds of interviews at a firm when he was told the company had to choose between him and someone with more experience. "Who would you pick?" he was asked.

Jon recommended the other guy. "I had to be honest," he told me today during a conversation in which I realized the company probably couldn't have made a bad choice.

Joriman, married with two young children and multiple degrees in chemistry and engineering, has been out of work since January when Donaldson Company, a filtration firm based in Bloomington, laid him off. Three of the firm's biggest clients -- Caterpillar, Volvo, and John Deere -- had pulled back business, and the ripple effect washed over Joriman's department.

"They were very humane," he said. Though he had high security clearances, there was no security guard to escort him to the door, he was allowed to come back the next day to tie up loose ends, and he was provided with job counselors to organize the search for a new job.

But there's nothing nice about losing a job. "I called my wife and I said, 'I've got good news and I've got bad news.'" The good news was that he didn't have to go on a business trip he was scheduled to take that day. "'The bad news is I don't have to go to work tomorrow. I've been laid off,'" he told his wife.

Joriman says he's very fiscally conservative and says as far back as last September he realized the economy was turning sour and that the family needed to cut back on expenses.

"Back in college (at the University of Minnesota's Institute of Technology), I had a professor who said, 'You will all be laid off at some point. I don't care how good you are.'" He followed the professor's advice to try to put away 6-12 months of income by buying a HUD foreclosed home years ago, fixing it up and selling it for a profit. "It was my Corvette fund because I always wanted a Corvette. Now it's the kids' college fund and we haven't had to touch it, " he said.

"I got over the initial shock," he said, "and I figured, 'OK, this'll be easy." But he says he hit the low point in March when he didn't have a new position. "It was frustrating, but I realized that the only thing I could control is the amount of energy I put into the job search." He says he enjoys networking, building relationships, and meeting people and when I asked him how he was doing going into the eighth month of unemployment, he said, "great."

"It's one big roller coaster," he said. He met with a business counselor this week who told him that he's talked to more than 2,000 people, "and not one person who got laid off has said it's bad."

"I call it pre-retirement," he said. He's spent more time with his kids (his wife works at Target Corporation), he sees his parents more often (and re-roofed their house last week), he's lost weight since dropping the health club membership, he's coaching his daughter's hockey team, coached T-ball, is volunteering with a firm that designs equipment to help third-world countries, and he's written a children's book, combining his love for hot rods (he's shown above with his '65 Mustang) with teaching kids how to spell.

H is for "hot rod,"
No matter the make, model or year,
All these rigs bring joy,
As well as blood, sweat and tears.

He'd hoped to have a new job by the time his oldest child went to school. That's unlikely to happen and he now is shooting to find something by Thanksgiving.

Joriman is looking for the right job, not just a job.

The right job, he says, "would be a senior scientist, chemist or chemical engineer within a technology driven organization. I love to make new products. I am a very mechanical chemical engineer that likes to take things from ideas to full production by solving all the problems along the way as well as finding and getting the correct experts to help. I like to manufacture items."

He credits his attitude partly on a professor who taught a leadership class at the University of St. Thomas, where he obtained a Master's Degree. "He walked in and said, 'Tell me about yourself without using your job title,'" Joriman said. "He told to constantly challenge yourself to not be your title."

(Unemployed? Let me tell your story. Contact me. See other posts in this series. )

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The Unemployed: Greg Hillenbrand

Posted at 12:03 PM on September 1, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: The Unemployed series

14.5 million people in America are officially unemployed. Thousands -- perhaps millions -- more have given up and are not counted. They're not numbers; they're individuals with a story to tell.

Greg Hillenbrand's unique position affords him the opportunity to provide a message to other unemployed people. "Things will get better," he told me today. Hillenbrand, 58, of Vadnais Heights is going through his second round of unemployment and he feels better prepared than the first time.

"The second time around is not quite as scary, especially since I've attended the workshops offered by the Minnesota Workforce Center. Being laid off a second time, there's less fear of the unknown," he said.

Not that unemployment is a picnic, mind you.

Hillenbrand has had two careers. One in manufacturing materials management at five separate local manufacturers where he successfully installed Manufacturing Requirements Planning (MRP) systems. And a second one in software development where he designed and supported software and processes to help manufacturers run their businesses more efficiently.

His software career ended in 2007, when the company downsized. He got almost a year's worth of pay as severance, but he'd have rather had a job. " I liked doing it and I was successful at it," he said. "At that time everybody said, 'This is a great opportunity. You can do whatever you always wanted to do.' I took a few weeks to think about it and came to the conclusion that I had already been doing what I wanted to do."

He started his own company, Tandem Enterprises, in August 2007, working as a consultant for SoftBrands, the firm that laid him off. But business was drying up and it wasn't enough to pay the bills. In March 2008, he joined InSite Group Consulting, helping customers upgrade their inventory systems. But when the firm ran out of customers in January, Hillenbrand ran out of a job.

"I had a gut feeling that this was coming," he said. "My manager was very nice about it. We both felt bad and shortly afterward, my manager got laid off."

"My immediate concern was the health care. It's what we attacked right away." Hillenbrand was able to get a health insurance plan from a broker for $700 a month, less than the $1,200 coverage his previous firm's COBRA plan would've required.

He's not close to destitution by a long shot. He and his wife are empty nesters, he'd set some money aside from his first job's severance and he says he's financial conservative, even acting as general contractor when his home was built. "As a result, we have a low mortgage," he said. But he didn't get full unemployment benefits because of his severance package.

The first time he lost his job, he said he was reluctant to tell people he was unemployed. "You get over that. The first time I was caught by surprise when I was let go."

It's been nine months of ups and downs. "There's been a number of job opportunities that looked promising, then just kind of dried up. Companies have a tendency not to call you back, and they don't return calls when you call them," he said. "For one of the jobs, they said that they were looking for a very specific set of skills or background experiences, but they wouldn't say what they were."

When he gets a whiff of a job opportunity, he allows himself to get excited, even if it increases the amount of disappointment when it doesn't come through. "I think it's good to get excited," he told me.

Hillenbrand isn't interested in retirement. He says older workers benefit companies because they don't have the responsibilities that take younger people away from their jobs, and they don't use the job as a stepping stone to still-unfolding careers. But he acknowledges that many companies are looking for young people.

"There doesn't seem to be a market (for him) because companies have... just like people have gotten afraid of the unknown, companies are holding onto whatever cash they have," he said

But he says he's optimistic that once things turn around, there will be a market for someone experienced in software consulting and technical support.

He's networking online, attending a job support group in Wayzata (where, he hears, more people are reporting getting jobs recently), and today was attending the first of four workshops for the unemployed at the Maplewood Library, sponsored by the Soar For Jobs support group. He's also volunteered at the Second Harvest Food Bank, worked around the house and lost 12 pounds, "just by not going out to eat lunch."

"My primary job is to find a job," he says. "But I'm also learning to survive by making my savings last as long as possible

(Unemployed? Let me tell your story. Contact me. See other posts in this series. )

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The Unemployed: Rhoda Quick

Posted at 1:52 PM on August 18, 2009 by Bob Collins (14 Comments)
Filed under: Economy, The Unemployed series

14.5 million people in America are officially unemployed. Thousands -- perhaps millions -- more have given up and are not counted. They're not numbers; they're individuals with a story to tell.

Rhoda Quick, 43, of St. Louis Park has led a group of Girl Scouts for eight years. She's a block captain in her neighborhood. She volunteers helping women in crisis. She serves on two boards in her city. She even volunteered her time helping the company that laid her off. If there is such a thing as karma, karma, this would be a great time to show yourself.

Quick lost her job as a legal assistant at HSBC in Minnetonka in a cost-cutting layoff on May 15, 2009. "I thought I was safe," she told me today. There had been a layoff in her department in December and she and two attorneys were the only ones left. She had three weeks to wrap up her work before the job ended. "I wanted to leave things better than I found them," she said. A few weeks later, her former colleagues called her for assistance with some tasks.

She made about $44,000 at HSBC. When the job ended, she realized it was just her and her 13-year-old daughter. Thirteen-year-olds don't understand unemployment for their sole parent. Thirteen year olds don't understand why asking for $20 for a concert is a big deal, why mom can't just can't get a job at Burger King, why there's no new clothes for school, or why it's possible they'll have to move to a neighborhood where the bus stop is a problem waiting to happen.

But legal assistants who lose their job understand what it means, which is why Quick worked from 10 last night until 5 this morning documenting her finances ("until the ink ran out in the printer," she said), grabbed a few hours sleep, met me for coffee, and then headed for the St. Louis Park Emergency Program, before stopping by HUD offices to photocopy material she needs to provide the agency if she can ever get an appointment. She's about to fall behind on her mortgage payments.

Since May, she says, she's applied for over 300 jobs. She's had two interviews. One job seemed perfect for her, but the company wanted her to start right away, and she was obligated, she said, to finish her work at HSBC first. "I should've said, 'I'll start tomorrow,'" she says now.

Another said she wasn't right for the job because the CEO said she "didn't have the personality for the job." The CEO didn't meet her. She is, for the record, as outgoing and personable as they come.

Things could be worse. She could still have the adjustable-rate mortgage she converted to a 30-year-fixed mortgage in March. She'd have an interest rate over 20 percent, she said. She assumed the mortgage in 1995 from her mother, who moved away with a new husband. She'd refinanced "several times" to make upgrades and now has a $1,707 mortgage payment.

With $1,542 a month in unemployment, and $335.38 in child support that only comes from April to October (her ex-husband is a landscaper), it didn't take long to burn through the $6,500 she had put away while employed. She still has a little money in a 401K, "but if I cash it in, there's a 30-percent tax penalty and if I lose every last cent, what would do I do if I still end up losing the house?" she asked. "It costs a lot to get off a sinking ship."

Last Thursday, she asked for help. She got "no" for an answer. "I've volunteered. I've worked all my life. I've never asked for help," she said. She went to Hennepin County after the county's Web site told her she could get some assistance and food stamps. But when she got to the office, with all of her financial records in plastic, tabbed and organized ("Just like a little attorney girl!"), "they looked at me like I was crazy and said, 'Wow, that's impressive,' then had me meet with a financial counselor who took one look and said, 'Are you kidding me? We can't help you!'"

Quick says she was told she makes too much money and has too much house. She owes $230,967. If she puts it up for sale, she'll never get that much.

So she did what any good administrative assistant would do. She called the lender to work out a deal to avoid falling behind on payments. Her lender is Bank of America, currently running TV ads touting their willingness to work with mortgage holders.

"They said, 'You're not behind; there's nothing we can do for you,'" Quick says. She calls the bank every Monday morning, to see if maybe the rules have changed and her March refinancing doesn't disqualify her from getting a break under a program to help people with mortgages stay afloat. Another agency told her "you need to walk away from the mortgage".

She's been trying to get a meeting with HUD officials to get some emergency help, but it'll take a few weeks to get an appointment. That's what she worked on all night. A hardship letter to explain to HUD why she needs help, why she'd rather pay, say, $700 a month now to keep the house, and add payments later when she gets a new job.

On September 1, she can start paying for health insurance under COBRA. It'll cost her $800 a month she obviously doesn't have. She's trying to find free health clinics.

"In the past few weeks friends have dropped off food (beef stew from Janine), and our neighbor, Sarah, dropped off homemade cookies and friends have taken us out to movies to try to keep our spirits up," she says. "I appreciate my friends all stepping up to show they care. This is the time when I really need a friend. I try to put on a happy face for my daughter, but when she goes to bed that's when I get busy trying to find solutions to my problems."

On a typical day of unemployment, she gets up at 7 in the morning and works until 3 looking for work and checking online sites. There are jobs, she says, "but there are a bazillion people looking." She wakes up at night wondering how it is she can make too much money to get help.

"I keep hitting brick walls and normally I'm the type of person who jumps right over them, but now I'm afraid of what's on the other side," she says.

"It's a full-time job just to try to save your home. At what point does someone say, 'We need to help this girl. She's done everything she can.'?"

If you're listening, karma, that point is now.

(Unemployed? Let me tell your story. Contact me.)

Check out the map below to read what people in MPR's Public Insight Network are telling us about the job climate around them.

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The Unemployed: Thomas Schunk

Posted at 2:10 PM on August 13, 2009 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Economy, The Unemployed series

14.5 million people in America are officially unemployed. Thousands -- perhaps millions -- more have given up and are not counted. They're not numbers; they're individuals with a story to tell.

Software developer Thomas Schunk of Crystal had big plans for May 29, 2008. He was to release some software at his United HealthCare job, a job he'd held for 11 years. Then an e-mail arrived from his boss' boss. He was to report to a conference room immediately. There, he was told he was no longer needed after 11 years of employment, and that someone else would clean out his desk.

That's the last time he had a full-time job.

"You go through the five stages of grief," he told me today. It was two to three weeks before he was able to say, "Geez, I gotta do something." He says he knew there was a recession going on, but he didn't think it was going to be so bad.

He tried to get unemployment assistance from the state, but United HealthCare challenged his request for $538 a week. He lost. He didn't get along well with his boss, he acknowledged. Now in his 15th month of unemployment, and while politicians have extended unemployment benefits for hundreds of thousands of Americans, Schunk hasn't gotten a dime, and he knows time is running out.

He's got just four months left on his COBRA, the program that gives workers the opportunity to keep health insurance by paying the full cost of it. He's got Type II diabetes and a temporary crown on a tooth. "I figure I've got enough (money left) for (about) three months."

Schunk made $70,000 a year in his job and his financial conservatism has kept him afloat this long. While working, he made extra payments on his mortgage, and bought his house with 10 percent down. He sold -- at a loss -- his United HealthCare stock. He had $12,000 in savings.

That was then. This is now: He just submitted a "massive application" for mortgage modification. He pays $1,181 a month and he'd like to get it trimmed by about $250 a month. But because he was so financially conservative, he's not gotten much assistance so far. "In many ways, I'm a victim of my own common sense," he told me, although he's aware things would be far worse now if he hadn't planned for tough times.

Still, he's now going to a food shelf for help.

When he lost his job, he figured he'd get another one soon enough; he applied for jobs posted on "the usual online sites." But he says he realized that while there were hundreds of jobs listed, they were often the same job listed by different recruiters trying to drum up business.

Summer 2008 turned into late-summer 2008, and he took a job delivering phone books. He also volunteered his time "to pick up my spirits."

"By November, the leaves were off the trees, the landscape was looking pretty scummy and I noticed the job postings dried up. It was rare to even get a rejection letter." Nobody was hiring.

By winter, he was delivering copies of Auto Trader for $100 a week (a job that ended shortly thereafter when the publication turned to another distribution method), and turning the thermostat lower.

After a job interview in February, he was feeling he might be in line for a job, or might survive the first round of interviews. But, he learned later, the company had decided to close applications for external candidates, and hire internal candidates for open positions to avoid further layoffs. "I was kind of crushed," he said.

By all appearances, Schunk has the right strategy for finding work. He's created a spreadsheet with a list of companies, their Web sites, their job postings, and a record of his contacting them. The list is up to 350 companies now. He joined a job support group in the early spring. "In a typical week, up to four people in the group would find jobs," he said, " and 30-80 more people would join the group."

He uses social media (See his LinkedIn page), keeps in contact with former colleagues, and keeps asking family and friends if they've heard of anything. He acknowledges he could do more networking, but it's painful for him. "I'm a programmer," he said. "I'm not a sales person," a disadvantage in an economy where you have to sell yourself and look comfortable doing it.

When he hears that someone else got a job, he says he's genuinely happy for them. "I used to be generally pessimistic and critical of other people," he said. "But in the last two or three years, I've worked hard to become more optimistic and positive."

He hasn't been to the job support group in a month because it's telephone-book-delivering season, again, but he hears that 10-20 people a week in the group are now finding work.

Obviously, he wants to be one of them, but the fact he's not is taking an obvious toll. "I can't sleep for a full night, anymore, he says.

"I hope things turn around soon. Businesses are still making money, but still laying off people." He says he disagrees with President Obama that people will go back to work after the economy turns around. A one-tenth-of-one-percent drop in the unemployment rate isn't going to cut it.

He's come out of this with an education. "Unless you work someplace with a union, there's no such thing as job security," he said. He's also come out of this as a teacher with a lesson plan for others who find themselves in his position. "Try to put things in perspective, go through the grieving process, do something to keep busy, join job support groups, and make a plan."

"I'm smart, hard-working, and I have skills. Something's got to give," he says.

One of these days, he's going to be one of the people in his job-search support group who brings the treats to his last meeting, and tells the story of how he got his new job.

(Unemployed? Let me tell your story. Contact me.)

Check out the map below to read what people in MPR's Public Insight Network are telling us about the job climate around them.

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The Unemployed: John Armstrong

Posted at 1:01 PM on August 10, 2009 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Economy, The Unemployed series

14.5 million people in America are officially unemployed. Thousands -- perhaps millions -- more have given up and are not counted. They're not numbers; they're individuals with a story to tell.

John Armstrong, 39, of St. Paul knew there was "an air of streamlining" in the company for whom he managed a restaurant for eight years. But when he was let go in February, it still came as a shock. It was a lower-end restaurant and he thought he could survive the economic downturn that's claimed the more upscale eateries.

He describes himself as "sickeningly optimistic," but even the most optimistic job-seekers in America can occasionally suffer the debilitating reality that the first question we're asked when we meet people is "what do you do?"

Armstrong looks for work. "I identify myself by the job I want," he told me over coffee this morning. "There's still a little bit of shame over being unemployed, but lots of people have been through it." At times over the last five months, he acknowledged, he's felt that maybe he hasn't been able to get a job because "I'm not good enough to be employed."

That's when he looks at the numbers again. Everyone knows someone who's unemployed. They're losing their jobs and it's not their fault.

Armstrong made about $44,000 a year -- about $850 a week -- at the restaurant in Woodbury. On unemployment, he gets about $470. In one interview, he said he indicated a desire for a salary of at least $35,000, but the manager told him others were willing to do the same job for $30,000. His benefits were due to run out next week, but the stimulus package extended them at least into next year.

John's wife knows what he's going through. She has been laid off twice, but now has a job with the state that allows their health care coverage to continue. His son, 17, had just been accepted to Hamline University when dad lost his job. "We all as a family decided we'll make it work, that this is the right place to make it work." Scholarships and loans have helped.

Armstrong estimates he's had over a dozen interviews without success so far. Sometimes he's called back for a second interview. He says he tries not to get "too up" over a prospective job. It's not easy. "I sat down with a woman and interviewed with her for two-and-a-half hours. I realized I'd love to work for her. I've wanted to work for her company. She even sent me out the door with food."

The next day she called to say her boss had hired someone else without telling her.

At least she called, he said. More often, people don't call to say he didn't get the job, and he doesn't call them anymore to find out why not. "They're pretty paranoid about what they say," he said, a nod to the litigious society, perhaps.

The Internet makes unemployment easy, he notes. "I can sit at my desk and search for jobs." Craigslist has been the most productive, he said. Once a week he also goes online and tells the state he didn't work last week, and he did look for work. The dehumanization of the unemployment line is a thing of the past, at least in Minnesota.

He keeps in touch with another manager who lost his job at the same restaurant recently, passing along jobs that might not be a good fit for himself. "Isn't he a competitor for the jobs you want?" I asked. Armstrong says if his colleague gets a job, it might open the door for him to get one, too.

There are bright spots to unemployment. "We're managing to have a lot more fun. When I was working as a restaurant manager, I had to work weekends and holidays. Now we're finding more things to do to have fun that don't cost much," he said.

You'll note in the picture above, Armstrong has a shirt and tie. "I hope you didn't dress up for me?" I said.

He didn't. He has a job interview this afternoon.

(Unemployed? Let me tell your story. Contact me.)

Check out the map below to read what people in MPR's Public Insight Network are telling us about the job climate around them.

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