In a sluggish recruitment environment, unemployed people take longer to find a new job. In many cases, unemployment benefits expire long before people return to work.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images North America
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Joe Raedle/Getty Images North America
Evan Smith lost his job at a Colorado RV dealership last spring after the company was sold. Since then, he has applied for many jobs, but has not found much success.
“You find something that you’re passionate about or something that you think fits your profile, you go in and over 100 people have already clicked ‘apply’ in the last two weeks,” Smith says. “So you just feel like a number.”
In the current context of stagnating recruitment, the figures are not encouraging. U.S. employers added just 29,000 jobs last month. This represents one job for 244 unemployed people. The average worker is taking longer to find a new job, which means more people are exhausting their unemployment benefits before they start collecting new paychecks.
Certainly, the unemployment rate remained very low: only 4.2% in September. But that’s little consolation for those stuck on the fringes of the job market, knocking on doors that are rarely opened.
“When you’re one of the people who doesn’t have a job, the percentage doesn’t really matter,” says Cheryl Huff. “It has a huge impact on your life.”
Cheryl Huff has applied for dozens of jobs since she was laid off by the Colorado state government four months ago. She only landed a handful of interviews.
Cheryl Huff
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Cheryl Huff
Huff was fired from a job with Colorado state government four months ago. Since then, she has applied to dozens of positions, devoting hours to each one, tailoring her resume to the specific requirements of the position. She got only a handful of interviews, all by phone, and many of what appeared to be automated emails.
Huff received two messages at once from the same employer one day, one saying his application was being reviewed and the other saying the position had already been filled.
“That’s one of the frustrations people feel,” Huff says. “Have you even looked at my stuff?”
In the meantime, Huff pays $1,300 a month to maintain her old health insurance provided by her employer. Her husband is retired, so the family budget is tight.
“It’s Social Security for him and unemployment for me,” Huff says. “It’s amazing how little money it is when you go to the store and see a bag of granola costs $8.50.”
Workers face state limits on unemployment benefits
The clock is ticking. Colorado is offering six months of unemployment benefits, and Huff’s is set to expire in early December. In many states, benefits expire even faster.
North Carolina offers less than three months of unemployment. Keke Moore of Raleigh has been unemployed for almost a year.
Keke Moore lost her job as a meeting planner in Raleigh, North Carolina, last December, and since then she has struggled to find a new position. The state only offers 12 weeks of unemployment benefits.
Keke Moore
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Keke Moore
“With so many people out of work, we’re all here, I feel like we’re fighting for scraps,” says Moore, who lost her job as a meetings planner last December.
Even while she was unemployed, North Carolina’s benefits are capped at $350 per week. Now that even that limited help has expired, Moore’s 21-year-old son is helping pay the household bills.
“Bless God, he has a part-time job, so he does what he can to help his mom,” Moore said. “But I mean, I feel like a failure as a parent, because it’s like I don’t want him to worry about bills.”
Of the country’s more than 7 million unemployed, nearly 2 million have been out of work for six months or more.
In addition to financial stress, such a long absence from work has emotional consequences.
Evan Smith, the laid-off RV worker, says the job search itself is a grueling full-time job. Sometimes he goes hiking just to take a break.
“My wife, usually on Fridays, when we’re sitting on the back porch after work – after she’s done working – she says to us, ‘How are you feeling?’” Smith says. “I think keeping a good attitude is huge. Getting discouraged is really, really easy.”
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