No long-term solution for jobless

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ADVANCE FOR USE SUNDAY, FEB. 5, 2012 AND THEREAFTER - In this Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012 photo, Jon Creek pets his dogs Harley, left, and Memphis while studying for a graduate school admissions test at his home in Mason, Ohio. Creek, who lives in suburban Cincinnati, was a construction company office manager until he and almost everyone else at the firm were laid off in December 2007. He'd known the business was in trouble and says he actually turned down another better-paying job earlier, out of loyalty. It took 18 months to land part-time work as an insurance agent's assistant at $240 a week - a dollar less than his unemployment checks. (AP Photo/Al Behrman)

Updated: March 11, 2012 8:23AM

J.R. Childress is up before the sun, bustling about in the French colonial brick house he built. He helps pack his wife’s lunch, downs some eggs or cereal for breakfast, pores over online and newspaper job listings and hopes — even prays — this will be the day when his fortunes turn around.

He’s determined to stay busy, job or no job, for sanity’s sake. Maybe he’ll help a neighbor. Exercise. Or check out computer blueprints of construction projects around Winston-Salem, N.C., to stay connected to the world where he thrived for three decades. Childress has been laid off twice since late 2009, most recently for 10 months.

“Every day is a struggle,” he says in a soft drawl. “The struggle is the unknown. You’ve worked your way up the ladder and you get to a point in life and a position in work where you’re comfortable ... then all of a sudden everything goes away. It’s like being thrown into a hole and you’re climbing to get up, but it’s greased. There’s no way of getting out.”

The frustrations of one 53-year-old North Carolina man are multiplied millions of times over across time zones and generations in a country still gripped by economic anxiety, despite increasing signs of recovery. And they resound in a presidential campaign pitting an incumbent defending his economic record against GOP opponents who are attacking it.

Unemployment in January was at its lowest level in three years — 8.3 percent — and 1.8 million jobs were added last year, compared with about 1 million in 2010. But there’s still a long way to go: There are 5.6 million fewer jobs than there were when the recession began in late 2007.

About 12.8 million people are out of work and what’s especially troubling, according to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, is the large number of long-term unemployed — more than 40 percent have been jobless more than six months.

The long-term unemployed don’t fit into any neat category. They’re young and old. They have high school diplomas and master’s degrees. Some become so discouraged, they stop looking for a time or become midlife college students. Others find temporary jobs, then return to the jobless rolls for long stretches. In 2011, the average length of being out of work was 39 weeks — about nine months.

Jon Creek, who lives outside of Cincinnati, was a construction company office manager until he and almost everyone else at the firm were laid off in December 2007. He’d known the business was in trouble and says he actually turned down another better-paying job earlier, out of loyalty.

It took 18 months to land part-time work as an insurance agent’s assistant at $240 a week — a dollar less than his unemployment checks.

A year later, Creek was stunned when a certified letter arrived with his final paycheck and notice that his job was over. Again, it was the economy. To add to the injury, his boss had posted the news on her Facebook page before telling him. “Everybody knew but me,” he says.

And since she hadn’t done the proper paperwork, he couldn’t file for unemployment.

That was August 2010. Creek — who holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration — has been looking since, worried that as time passes, someone unemployed for, say, six months may seem more appealing.

“I worked hard. I did everything right,” he says. “Now I’m at the point of asking myself, ‘Will I ever be able to get anything?’ It’s not just about a salary. It’s about being able to go out and say, ‘I do this. This is my identity.’”

On occasion, Creek, now 35, has become so discouraged, he’s temporarily quit looking. “If you send out your resume so many times, every employer in the city has it,” he says. “If you take it out of the mix for a while, perhaps you’ll get noticed next time.”

Being unemployed not only hurts financially — Creek has an $11,000-plus student loan — it leaves emotional scars, too. “The only people I talk to during the day are my wife, my dogs and service people,” he says. “It’s very isolating, very lonely.”

His wife, Leslie, a financial analyst, is a constant comfort. “She tells me I’m smart, that I have a lot to offer,” he says.

Creek is considering returning to school this fall to get a master’s degree in accounting.

“Sometimes you feel like playing the victim card,” he says, “but you really don’t want to. It tells the employer you’re not very confident. I tell myself good things are to come ... but it’s hard to remain hopeful.”