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Economists fear that the nascent recovery will leave more people behind than past recessions have, failing to create jobs in sufficient numbers to absorb the record-setting ranks of the longterm unemployed.
Call them the new poor: people long accustomed to the comforts of middleclass life who are now relying on public assistance for the first time in their lives, potentially for years to come.
About 2.7 million jobless people will lose their unemployment benefits before the end of April unless Congress approves the proposal by the administration of President Barack Obama to extend the payments, according to the Labor Department. Here in Southern California, Jean Eisen has been without work since she lost her job selling beauty salon equipment more than two years ago. In the several months she has endured with neither a paycheck nor an unemployment check, she has relied on local food banks for her groceries.
She has learned to live without the prescription medications she is supposed to take for high blood pressure and cholesterol. She has become effusively religious—an unexpected turn for this onetime standup comic with Xrated material — finding in Christianity her only form of health insurance.
‘‘I pray for healing,’’ said Ms. Eisen, who is 57. ‘‘When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got to go with what you know.’’ Warm, outgoing and prone to the positive, Ms. Eisen has worked much of her life. Now, she is one of 6.3 million Americans who have been unemployed for six months or longer, the largest number since the government began keeping track in 1948.
Ms. Eisen has the unfortunate distinction of being in a group—women from 45 to 64 years of age—whose long-term unemployment rate has grown rapidly.
In 1983, after a deep recession, women in that range made up only 7 percent of those who had been out of work for six months or longer, according to the Labor Department. Last year, they made up 14 percent.
Ms. Eisen exhausted her unemployment benefits twice before her check was restored by an extension. Last week, her payments ran out again.
She and her husband now settle their bills with only his $1,595 monthly disability check. The rent on their apartment is $1,380 and she does not have the money to put downa deposit on a cheaper apartment.
‘‘We’re looking at the very real possibility of being homeless,’’ she said.
Every downturn pushes some people out of the middle class before the economy resumes expanding. Most recover.
Many prosper. But some economists worry that this time could be different.
An unusual constellation of forces — some embedded in the modern economy, others peculiar to this wrenching recession— might make it especially difficult for those out of work to find their way back to their middle-class lives.
Labor experts say the economy needs 100,000 new jobs a month just to absorb entrants to the labor force. With more than 15 million officially jobless, even a vigorous recovery is likely to leave a huge number out of work for years.
Some labor experts say the basic functioning of the American economy has changed in ways that make jobs scarce — particularly for older, lesseducated people like Ms. Eisen, who has gone only as far as high school.
Large companies are increasingly owned by institutional investors who crave swift profits, which are often achieved by cutting payrolls, and the declining influence of unions has made it easier for employers to shift work to part-time and temporary employees.
Factory work and even white-collar jobs have moved in recent years to lowcost countries in Asia andLatin America.
Automation has helped manufacturing cut 5.6 million jobs since 2000 — the sort of jobs that once provided lower-skilled workers with middle-class salaries.
‘‘American business is about maximizing shareholder value,’’ said Allen Sinai, chief global economist at the research firm Decision Economics. ‘‘You basically don’t want workers. You hire less, and you try to find capital equipment to replace them.’’ Traditionally, three sectors have led the way out of recession: cars, home building and banking. But car companies have been shrinking because strapped households have less buying power. Homebuilding is limited by fears about a glut of foreclosed properties.
Banking is expanding, but this seems largely a function of government support that is being withdrawn.
At the same time, the continued bite of the financial crisis has crimped the flow of money to small businesses and new ventures, which tend to be major sources of new jobs.
All of which helps explain why Ms.
Eisen—who has never before struggled to findwork—feels a familiar pang each time she scans job listings on her computer.
There are positions in health care, most requiring the experience she lacks. Office jobs demand familiarity with software she has never used. Jobs at fast food restaurants are mostly secured by young people and immigrants.
Some poverty experts say the broader social safety net is not up to cushioning the effects of the worst downturn since the Great Depression.
‘‘You have very large sets of people who have no social protections,’’ said Randy Albelda, an economist at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.
‘‘They are landing in this netherworld.’’ When Ms. Eisen and her husband, Jeff, applied for food stamps, they were turned away for having too much monthly income. The cutoff was $1,570 a month — $25 less than her husband’s disability check.
Ms. Eisen grew up poor in New York City. Her father was in maintenance and her mother worked part time at a company that made window blinds.
She married Jeff when she was 19, and they soon moved to California, where he had grown up. He worked in sales for a chemical company and they rented an apartment in Buena Park, a growing spread of houses filling out former orange groves. She stayed home and took care of their daughter.
‘‘I never asked him how much he earned,’’ Ms. Eisen said. ‘‘I was of the mentality that the husband took care of everything. But we never wanted.’’ By the early 1980s, their finances became strained, so she took a job as a quality assurance clerk at a factory that made aircraft parts. It paid $13.50 an hour and had health insurance.
When the company moved to Mexico in the early 1990s, Ms. Eisen quickly found a job at a travel agency. When online booking killed that business, she got the job at the beauty salon equipment company. It paid $13.25 an hour, with an annual bonus—enough for presents under the Christmas tree.
But six years ago, her husband took a fall at work and then succumbed to various ailments — diabetes, liver disease, high blood pressure — leaving him confined to the couch. Not until 2008 did he secure his disability check.
And now they find themselves in this desert of joblessness, her paycheck replaced by a $702 unemployment benefit every other week. She received 14 weeks of benefits after she lost her job, and then a seven-week extension.
For most of October through December 2008, she received nothing, as she waited for another extension. The checks came again, then ran out in September 2009. They were restored by an extension right before Christmas.
Their daughter has back problems and is also living on disability checks, making the church their ultimate safety net.
‘‘I never thought I’d be in the position where I had to go to a food bank,’’ Ms.
Eisen said. But there she is, standing in the parking lot of the Calvary Chapel church, chatting with a half-dozen women, all waiting to enter the Bread of Life Food Pantry.
When her name is called, she steps intoawindowless alcove, where a smiling woman hands her three bags of groceries: carrots, potatoes, bread, cheese and a hunk of frozen meat.
‘‘Haven’t we got a lot to be thankful for?’’ Ms. Eisen asks.
For one thing, no pinto beans.
‘‘I’ve got 10 bags of pinto beans,’’ she says. ‘‘And I have no clue how to cook a pinto bean.’’ Local job listings are just as mysterious.
On a bulletin board at a county-financed career services center, many arewritten in jargon hinting of accounting or computers.
‘‘Nothing I’m qualified for,’’Ms. Eisen says. ‘‘When you can’t define what it is, that’s a pretty good indication.’’ Her counselor has a couple of possibilities— acashier at a supermarket and a night desk job at a motel.
‘‘I’ll e-mail them,’’ Ms. Eisen promises.
‘‘I’ll tell them what a shining example of humanity I am.’’
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