Unemployment: One Family's Story

 

Let's start at the beginning: on September 11, 2001, I was driving to a clients job site to deliver a product for his job...

Now, I remember those horrible stories of planes crashing into the World Trade Center and elsewhere. I remember feeling sick about all those people just like me. They were going to work, like they had every other day, and then they were no more.

Little did I realize that one day would change my life as much as it did.

I worked for a company that sold commercial doors. This is a highly specialized skill that requires years of experience and training. I had just completed my second course on my way to certification, which meant I was halfway to my goal. I had been around the selling of this type of material for fifteen years at the time. My career was pretty solid and I was making a nice living. I had bought a house, and was on my way to the American dream. But on that fateful day in September, my world was beginning to crack. The building industry after 9-11 went into a tailspin and a year later, I found myself out of a job.

I had just turned forty-five, and this was my second bout with unemployment.

I had lost a position 10 years earlier, and I spent almost three months finding another job. That job loss was not due to the economy at the time, but to a policy of cutting costs.

Now, it was happening again.  Ten years older, my  prospects of finding another job were even harder than the first time.  It  took me almost six months to find another job, and I was making about half as much money. Needless to say-- that was a rough time.

Even with my job and my wifes job, it took us over a year to get into the black as far as bills. Then, one day my wife told me she has just lost her job. The cycle began again. The loss of her position was yet another cost-cutting policy. Her employer did not think she was worth what she was being paid. The company was in a slump due to the downturn in the economy, and had to cut costs. She is thirty-five, and is having a little better luck, but, as of this writing has not yet found a job.

We are living in Pittsburgh, PA. Our state has lost more jobs in the last three years than any other state in the U.S. We see that Mr. Bush has created 300,000 jobs in one month, but the unemployment rate has gone up by only .1%. This tells us that more jobs were lost than were created. We must also remember that unemployment statistics only measure the people that are receiving benefits, not the ones who have run out of benefits, or the ones that have taken a job that pays much less. We do not hear of the under-employed.

We can only blame so much on 9-11. It's ironic and sad to see our president taking a bus tour to talk about jobs. His bus was probably built in Canada! 

The news is: corporate executives run companies into the ground and escape with millions of dollars.

My story, and the story of my family, is just one of millions, like other Americans. The politicians in Washington need to take a look at what is happening in America, and really do something about it. I am one of the lucky few who did find work that could feed and house my family, and we are more fortunate than some other people in the world.                                                                             



It is time for our representatives in the Capitol to think about the people. I think 9-11 was an excuse for a bad economy. The guys in Washington are tied to corporate America, where the bottom-line is most important, and the lives changed by frequent cost-cutting measures are never considered. Mr.Bush has always had wealth, and has never needed to face cost cutting from the "little guy's" perspective. He and the other members of Congress do not have any idea about the  real cost of the bottom line to the average American.

 

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