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Public Affairs coverage from our award-winning staff |
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Hard Working: When Unemployment Benefits Run Out
Produced by Adriene Hill on Thursday, August 27, 2009
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Carole and her cat Romeo |
The unemployment rate in the Chicago area in July was 10.7 percent, higher than the national average. For many people, the search for work started months and months ago. As of last month, a third of job seekers in the country have been out of work for more than half a year. Chicagoan Carole Cantrell has been looking for work twice that long. Back in February, we brought you her story about piecing life together as part of our series Hard Working. Today, we check in.
If you heard Carole’s story back in the winter you might remember that she’s a 52-year-old woman looking for a graphic design job. She lives with her super-fluffy cat Romeo in a sparsely furnished apartment on Chicago’s north side. So far, she’s had no luck landing a permanent job; she does have a little freelance work. On the day I visit, she's designing a party invitation for a non-profit in Chicago.
CAROLE: (on phone)...the digital, you can do laser print...
She’s not getting paid for the invitation, but she’s hoping it might help her get paid work later. Maybe someone with money to spend will see it and like it.
Her hunt for work is now more than a year old. She’s spent day after day, hour after hour since last June, reading job descriptions and sending cover letters for full time jobs and freelance work.
Today-more frustration.
CAROLE: It’s early in the morning. I checked Craig’s List and the Columbia website already, I didn’t find anything. Some days there’s nothing. It has slowed down.
And money isn’t good. She has a college loan that may go into default at the end of the month. She gets regular calls from school bill collectors.
CAROLE: What I think is kind of funny is that, well, I don’t have anything. He said, 'They’ll garnish your wages,' and I said, 'Well I don’t have any wages. I don’t work for a company, I work intermittently and so I don’t know.' Maybe I should be scared. It’ll ruin my credit. I don’t want that, but it’s not the end of the world. I’ll pay cash. What can I do? If I don’t have it, there is nothing I can do.
The social safety net, set up to help people get through rough stretches, is showing its limits. A spokesman with the Illinois Department of Employment Security says thousands of people could exhaust their unemployment benefits in the next two or three weeks. And, by the end of the year, there could be 40,000 people no longer getting unemployment checks. The rough stretch just keeps stretching. Carole’s unemployment insurance ran out in July.
CAROLE: That was another day that made me want to cry.
She was getting by with food stamps, but she made too much money doing a temporary job to keep them. Before food stamps ran out, she stocked her pantry with foods that don’t spoil—like beans and pasta—even peanut butter.
In many ways, her situation seems more precarious than it did in February. The backstop is gone. For the most part, she’s on her own in this recession.
Still, surprisingly, maybe even ironically, she seems more positive than she has in the past.
CAROLE: I think in general I have more confidence in myself and my abilities, and maybe just getting accustomed to the situation.
She says she thinks sometimes about where Romeo the cat, who sprawls out on her chest while she works on cover letters, will live if she loses her apartment. But she’s getting by. When the unemployment payments stopped she says she stopped thinking of herself as unemployed.
CAROLE: I see myself as a freelancer now. It’s like OK, here I am. It was always an option. I knew that going into this field and um I’ve always known that I’m very good at learning on the fly and that’s what I’ve been doing. And I’ve been surviving that way. I’d like to take it beyond survival. That would be good.
But she sees what she has now as a smidgen of success. She and her cat have a home, a place to live. They’ve made it this far. It’s still incredibly stressful, sometimes she says it’s just too hard to work on her art. She curls up in front of the TV instead.
And the day to day strain of being without regular work remains. Carole still doesn’t know where rent money or grocery money will come from next.
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anon, Hyde Park // Friday, August 28, 2009 @ 7:45 AM
Ms Hill,
Carole C. may be able to get a hardship deferment on her student loans. I think that would be preferable to default.
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Dee, Southwest // Friday, August 28, 2009 @ 9:07 AM
Hang in there! I was there an the only thing that I could do was maintain that same positive attitude and keep plugging away. Network! I am now employed and I'm glad I kept at it.
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carole c., logan square // Friday, August 28, 2009 @ 9:45 AM
Thanks for the suggestion, anon. I've put Federal loans in deferment but, Sallie Mae is not as accommodating!
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S2, South Shore // Friday, August 28, 2009 @ 9:55 AM
I know exactly how Carole is feeling. I too have been out of work for a year now. The only difference is I was a contractor to began with so I have not been able to receive unemployment. I have not paid bills in over six months. I borrowed money to come to a job interview at the U.N in Vienna,Austria. It would have been a great opportunity for me. I didn't get the job. For now I'm in limbo in Vienna.
I'm over educated and unemployed on two continents.
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Monika, Palatine // Sunday, August 30, 2009 @ 11:49 PM
I, like Carol have been out of work since Aug 2008, trying desperately to find a job. I have been on unemployment since then except that I worked on a short term contract for 17 days in February.
For people who don't know If you are on any extension and your anniversary date comes up, and if you worked in that past year even one day your unemployment will revert to the state benefits. If you even work one day you are eligible for state benefits and your new benefit amount will be calculated based on your earnings. Many people think that you have to work 30 days, but that only applies to the company, not the individual. Meaning that if you work more than 30 days at a company that company becomes your billable employer. So what that meant for me was my unemployment went from 500 a week to 175 a week. I am a single mom with 2 kids. This with child support will barely pay my mortgage for a month.
Any suggestions??
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