In September, Chip Marshall was laid off from a sales job that paid more than $20 an hour. To support his wife and two daughters, Marshall, 52, picked up a part-time job with UPS, driving five nights a week from 3:30 a.m. until 8 a.m. With the help of unemployment insurance and occasional work at a funeral home, he was able to keep his home in Glenview, but it was tough.
“For the first couple of months,” Marshall said, “you’re so depressed you can’t move.”
At the Evanston workNet Center, the unemployment office Marshall visited Monday, the effects of the recession are obvious. The nationwide unemployment rate hit 7.2 percent in December – the highest in 16 years – the U.S. Department of Labor reported Jan. 9th. The rise in joblessness came as little surprise to Al Saulys, center manager for workNet.
“I’ve been in this business for about 23 years, and I’ve seen different spikes in the economy and different ups and downs,” Saulys said. “However, this, to me, is unprecedented.”
The Illinois Department of Employment Security reported in December that the state’s November unemployment rate was 6.9 percent. The workNet Center has not published any numbers on unemployment insurance for this fiscal quarter, but in September, 1,058 people applied for assistance at the Evanston office. That’s up 495 applications since September 2007.
“You read all the news and, clearly, anybody who’s been awake knows about the recession,” Saulys said. “But when you work in an environment like this, you can really see it play out before your eyes.”
In one corner of the workNet Center, student volunteers from Northwestern give career advice and personalized help to job seekers through the National Student Partnerships program. Site Coordinator Sarah Shubitowski said the population of people coming in for guidance is changing.
“We’ve seen people that are in their early 50s, just an older generation of workers that are being laid off,” she said. “Many of them have a limited skill set that they’ve been using for the last 20 years, and now they’re being forced out of that position. And because of the changing jobs available, they’re not able to use those skills to go back into the work force.”
Lawrence Marshall, no relation to Chip, comes in to NSP weekly for job search help. Some days, he works in crowd management at NU athletic events. Other days, he works as an usher at the Symphony Center downtown. It’s been four or five years since his last full-time job as a teacher’s assistant, Lawrence Marshall said, and the continuous search is draining.
“It’s really depressing. It’s a struggle,” said Lawrence Marshall, 56, who lives in Evanston. “It’s really tiresome because you go through all these interviews and you still don’t get hired.”
Between work, school and public transportation, just getting to interviews has been tough, Lawrence Marshall said. Still, the search goes on, and he has widened his job search to include other parts of the country.
When people like Lawrence Marshall ask NSP for help with a job search, pointing them in the right direction can be difficult, Shubitowski said. The retail industry, for example, has suffered from decreased consumer spending, so NSP tries to steer job seekers toward other sectors. Another obstacle is that many jobs now require computer skills, which older job seekers might not have learned or needed in their previous positions.
WorkNet’s Saulys said the recession’s effects are also reaching higher up the job ladder.
“Clearly you have people in the financial sector that are being affected,” he said. “It is kind of a snowball type of effect. Certainly a lot of mid-level managers, executive positions coming in. It’s across the board.”
As Chip Marshall left the workNet Center to meet with another potential part-time employer, he said he is keeping a positive attitude even though the job market is tough. Still, he’s not counting on the economy picking up any time soon.
“It’s going to take a while to get us out of this recession,” he said. “I think eventually we’re going to get out of it, but I don’t think it’s going to happen fast.”
