‘No way to sugarcoat’ joblessness

When a job market goes bad, it can go bad in lots of ways.

Some people work part-time because they can’t find a full-time job. Some work more than one job to meld several inadequate paychecks. And a lot of people —- about 350,000 in Georgia —- are looking for work.

Thursday, the state Labor Department announced that 74,480 laid-off Georgians filed first-time claims for unemployment benefits during November, a 55 percent jump from the same month a year ago.

Soon to be one of them is Steve Garmon, 60, of Flowery Branch, who has held a job with the same small company since 1969.

For a few weeks more, Garmon is an employee of Speedometer Service Co., which has shrunk from 40 to just a few employees and will soon shut its doors for good.

For the Roswell company, which has repaired electronic auto parts, recession has only accelerated the trajectory of technology.

Garmon will enter the job search as an older worker in a job market where there are roughly three unemployed for each opening. “I am planning to take a week or two off and then start looking for a job,” he said. “I am between a rock and a hard place.”

Unlike previous recessions, Georgia has not been cushioned from the pounding that the broader economy is taking.

Nationally, new jobless claims rose to 573,000 —- the highest level since late 1982, the Employment and Training Administration reported Thursday. For the past four weeks new claims averaged 540,000 a week, a 59 percent increase from the average a year ago.

“There is no way to sugarcoat it,” said Mark Vitner, senior economist with the Wachovia Economics Group. “This is really rough.”

The U.S. jobless rate has climbed to 6.7 percent, while the economy has shrunk by about 2 million since the start of the year.

That is only a downpayment, he said.

Gross domestic product dipped last quarter, and the current quarter may see a stunning drop, he said. “We will have essentially four consecutive quarters of decline. And we won’t have a strong recovery —- which means the unemployment rate will continue to increase. Nine percent is what we are thinking.”

Before growth is rekindled, metro Atlanta will shed about 100,000 jobs, Vitner said.

Some cold comforts

The job market has been worse.

For instance, while more than 4.4 million Americans are receiving jobless benefits, that is shy of the 4.7 million in 1982 when the work force was much smaller.

The official U.S. unemployment rate peaked during that recession at 10.8. What is worrisome is the notion that the nation is nowhere near the bottom yet.

So if there was a glimmer of hope in Thursday’s reports, it was the slowing in the pace of decline. That could mean that the wave of cuts is approaching a crest. For the previous three months, new claims had run more than 70 percent above the levels of 2007.

“When the claims number rolls over and starts to get better, that will tell you we are finding a bottom,” said Vitner, who said that could come by mid-2009.

Job cuts add to the competition for work.

Jon Baime of Decatur, a freelance video producer and editor, feels that pressure after reading in the past few weeks about similarly skilled people at the Weather Channel and CNN, his former employer, being let go. “Any new business I am looking for, some percentage of those people who want to stay in the business will be looking for, too,” he said.

Baime, 44, finishes work today on a several-weeks-long project. After that, he doesn’t have much work on his schedule for more than a month.

“It’s not like 2001, where things were bad for three months and then got better,” he said. “I know people who have been looking for jobs, people who have just lost their jobs and people who are just worried about losing their jobs. This one is different.”

Among the pressures on workers is the battering incomes have taken from rising prices for food and —- until the past several months —- energy.

Hyper-employment

So while not having enough work is one symptom of trouble in the job market, the scramble to pay the bills sometimes pushes workers into the opposite situation.

Ronald Barnes, 47, of Atlanta, a shuttle bus driver for the city of Atlanta, was laid off in May. Since then, he has hustled between three part-time jobs that still don’t add up to a full-time paycheck. He works at FedEx about half time. A licensed barber, he works in a shop near the corner of Camp Creek Parkway and Campbellton Road.

On Sundays, he drives a church bus. All together, he makes about $300 a week.

“I just go back and forth and try to make a dollar,” he said. “I would prefer to work full time, but I haven’t been able to find anything full time. The economy is just bad.”

The stress in the job market is not spread evenly. Higher joblessness is felt especially by young workers and African-Americans, as well as people who have limited education.

From aide to aid?

More than one-in-10 workers who do not have a high school diploma are out of work, yet they increasingly have company from the highly credentialed.

Anthony Esposito, 32, has a bachelor’s from the University of Georgia, a master’s from the University of Florida and a law degree from the University of Virginia. A year ago, he was working part time for a large Atlanta law firm while he prepared to take the bar exam. The firm, where he had interned for two summers, offered him a job that would have begun last spring.

Starting pay would have been $145,000.

Five days before he was to begin, the firm withdrew the offer. Since then he has toured job fairs, traipsed through Internet job sites, handed out resumes and made a habit of calling legal staffing agencies.

So far, nothing.

“The legal market across the country, but particularly in Atlanta, is very difficult right now,” he said. “Then, if you don’t get an offer from the firm where you had worked, that story does not play well with other firms.”

Now, he is struggling just to pay the electric bill.

“I come from the old school that you work as hard as you can and let the chips fall where they may, and you expect them to fall well,” Esposito said. “If anything, I used to volunteer at the food bank and homeless shelters. To think of reaching out to those agencies now is something new.”

 SHANNON PEAVY / Staff 
JOBLESS CLAIMS 
Georgia filings and change from same month in 2007: 
June....45,553 ..(35.9%) 
July....59,165 ..(31.5%) 
Aug.....50,090 ..(72.1%) 
Sept. ..56,652 ..(76.3%) 
Oct.....76,627 ..(75%) 
Nov.....74,480 ..(55%) 
Source: Georgia Dept. of Labor 

 McClatchy/Tribune 
OUT OF WORK 
The number of U.S. workers applying for unemployment benefits last week rose to its highest level in 26 years. 
Jobless claims weekly: 
Early '80s recession: 695,000 
Early '90s recession: 564,000
Sept. 11 attacks: 517,000
Current recession: 573,000
Source: U.S. Department of Labor