Updated: April 8, 2011, at 4:30 pm
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Now available on YouTube here.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are more than 28 million people currently unemployed — that’s including those Read the rest of this entry »
In an economy plagued by historic unemployment and long-term joblessness, it’s probably safe to say you’ve seen them. You may even know one of them.
They are the former lawyers now forced to work part-time behind the McDonald’s food counter. They are the once successful, award-winning journalists that have been out of a job so long, they’re convinced they’ll never get back to work.
If you only listen to mainstream media reports, you might not realize just how many of these workers actually exist. Furthermore, just how bad the current economic situation really is. Read the rest of this entry »
What a last six months it’s been. I feel like I’ve been flying by the seat of my pants since the launch of “The Decline: The Geography of a Recession” last October. Who would’ve thought a simple email from my boss, who first shared the map with co-workers and a few close friends, would amount to all of this? And to think this all started as a quick, passing thought while completing an assignment at work, which then spawned into a final project for graduate school.
Over the last few months, Read the rest of this entry »
ABC World News anchor Diane Sawyer references “The Decline: The Geography of a Recession” on Friday, February 5, 2010.
Photo: somenoise/Flickr.com
As a journalist, I’ve covered my share of uncomfortable stories. I’ve interviewed families of murder victims, rape victims, human trafficking victims, recovering drug addicts, gang members, etc. The look of despair and hopelessness in their eyes was always unsettling. Oftentimes, I carried their stories home. Many of them remain with me today. Stories like that are pretty hard to let go.
So, when my boss asked me back in April to fly to Wichita, KS, to cover a story about some 2,000 (yes, 2,000!) people being laid off from a local aerospace company, I thought I was more than prepared for what I was about to see and hear. Read the rest of this entry »
Congratulations to Marina Mathews, the laid-off communications professional featured in my article “Losing Middle Ground: Defining what it means to live in today’s ‘middle class.'”
After seven months of shopping resumes, networking, and combing the web, Mathews has finally landed a job! She’s the new Marketing Communications Manager for a public relations software management company.
“A telling moment for me is when I realized that all but one of my pool of five references is out of work,” she says. “My new job opportunity could not have come at a better time since I was on my last unemployment check. I had actually started on the ’emergency’ benefits. As we say in the Baptist church, ‘He’s an ON TIME God, Yes He is!'”
You can read all about Mathews’ seven month journey, as well as get some tips on how she made it out the unemployment sinkhole, by reading her blog here.
(Photo: jenn_jenn/Flickr.com)
Are you out of work? Laid off? Or worse, fired (these days most employers don’t even need a reason)? If so, my prayers are with you.
If not, then you’d better get down on your knees and start praying for yourself! Read the rest of this entry »
(Photo: Louise Ford/Flickr.com)
Ask five people to define “middle class,” and you could very well get five different answers… Read the rest of this entry »
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