Being Unemployed in America

He’s one. One story, one splintered bit of something that used to feel whole, solid, and limitless. Futures fade faster these days and a regular guy with a strong work ethic, the kind of guy that used to find success, find a place in this country now stands on the slippery edge.

Its all necessity now, no corners left to cut. Daily calculations minus every dime and dollar from a dwindling pot down to zero while some things fall by the way side. And like that a credit report can be destroyed, and like that a house can hang by a thread, this is how someone becomes homeless, this is how good people stop paying their bills.

It’s been almost three years for him, three years of interviews and rejections, of struggle, depression, tears, and at times laughter because sometimes there’s nothing else. He’s been made harder by this ordeal, an easy smile not as quick to appear, fading fast, drowned by the anxiety that comes rushing in.

In September of 2007 it was the layoff, not unexpected after months of cutbacks. “Three months tops” he told his wife, reassuring her that he would have a job in three months. But nobody expected a downturn to turn into a crater, crushing millions of jobs, millions of lives just like his.

He was sick a few months later, his arms and legs heavy, heavier everyday while his lips lazily moved to form words that had previously seemed effortless. A little while later he was on temporary disability, this treatment and that chipping away at the disease, bringing him back but not all the way back, not sick enough to be considered disabled but not well enough to work without limitations as he always had before.

Still resumes went out, via email, in person, through the mail. More then a thousand, but less then ten thousand he estimates, with call backs and interviews few and far between. There were glimmers though, the job he had interviewed for prior to getting sick calling to offer him a job that he was more then capable of doing with only minor accomodations, their enthusiasm for him slowly sliding away as he asked for a downstairs desk due to his inability to climb stairs, “we never did hear back from them“ his wife says.

It was in the Spring of last year when the nightmare descended further down into the black and thorny, something they had feared ever since he had lost his job, his wife had lost hers. “It was like our emergency shoot ripped while we were falling” she says.

They sit now in their living room, those objects people often find solace in sold off to pay their bills and keep their house. His benefits have run out now, hers not enough for two people to get by one. Their COBRA subsidy ends soon with his medical bills still faithfully coming in, “almost daily, something, a phone call and then a threatening letter. We tell them we have nothing they tell us to borrow from our friends and family.” she recounts, a pile of bills maybe three inches thick in her hands.

Family has helped, a little here a little there but their not from the kind of folks that have much extra. They’ll get private insurance when their COBRA runs out, a little more money and a lot less coverage. They have no answer, no plan for when their modest savings account runs out, no idea what they can do that they haven’t done already in pursuit of work. “We have optimism” she says, “but not much.”

They are nameless and faceless in this piece because they don’t wish to advertise, because they feel it will pose a disadvantage to them in their pursuit of work if people know about their full struggle. They don’t want pity and they don’t want charity, they just want to keep floating, keep surviving.

They aren’t unique, no different then so many others. All lost in the anonymity of large numbers. Abandoned by the press and the politicians with their hollow and offensive pledges of allegiance and concern. But in that living room they are real, lives built up over time now torn, piece by piece by circumstances beyond their control. Its that kind of tragedy repeated over and over in this country that should shame us for allowing an absence of dialogue, resource, and intervention at a time when “optimism” dies, and lives like theirs fade away to smoke.