Evan Smith lost his job at a Colorado RV dealership this past spring after the company was sold. He's applied for numerous jobs since then, but hasn't found much traction.
"You find something that you're excited about or something that you think fits your profile and you go in and over 100 people have already clicked 'applied for it' in the last two weeks," Smith says. "So you just feel like you're a number."
In today's stagnant hiring environment, the numbers are not encouraging. U.S. employers added just 29,000 jobs last month. That's one job for every 244 unemployed workers. The average worker is taking longer to find a new job, and that means more people are exhausting their unemployment benefits before any new paychecks begin.
To be sure, the unemployment rate has remained very low: just 4.2% in September. But that's little consolation for those who are stuck on the outskirts of the job market, knocking on doors that rarely open.
"When you're one of the people that doesn't have a job, it doesn't really matter what the percentage is," says Cheryl Huff. "It's impacting your life in a big, big way."
Huff was laid off from a state government job in Colorado four months ago. Since then, she's applied for dozens of positions, spending hours on each one, tailoring her resume to the specific job requirements. She's gotten only a handful of interviews —all by telephone — and a lot of what seem like automated emails.
Huff once got two messages at once from the same employer, one saying her application was under review and the other saying the job had already been filled.
"That's one of the frustrations that people are having," Huff says. "Did you even look at my stuff?"
In the meantime, Huff is paying $1,300 a month to maintain her old employer-provided health insurance. Her husband is retired, so their family budget is tight.
"It's Social Security for him and unemployment for me," Huff says. "It's amazing how little money that is when you go to the store and you see a bag of granola is $8.50."
Workers are bumping up against state limits for unemployment benefits
The clock is ticking. Colorado offers six months of unemployment benefits, and Huff's are set to run out in early December. In many states, benefits expire even faster.
North Carolina offers less than three months of unemployment. Keke Moore in Raleigh has been out of work for almost a year.
"With so many people being out of work, we're all out here, it feels like to me, fighting for scraps," says Moore, who lost her job as a meeting planner last December.
Even when she was receiving unemployment, North Carolina benefits are capped at $350 a week. Now that even that limited aid has expired, Moore's 21-year-old son has been helping out with the household bills.
"Bless his heart, he does have a part-time job, so he's been doing what he can to help his mama out," Moore says. "But I mean, I feel like a failure as a parent, because it's like I don't want him worrying about bills."
Of the more than 7 million unemployed people in the country, nearly 2 million have been out of work for six months or more.
Aside from the financial stress, there's an emotional toll to being out of work so long.
Evan Smith, the laid-off RV worker, says job-hunting itself is an exhausting full-time gig. Sometimes he goes for a hike just to give himself a break.
"My wife, usually on a Friday when we're sitting on the back porch after work — after she gets done with work — she's like, 'How are you feeling?'" Smith says. "Keeping a good attitude, I think, is huge. Getting discouraged is really freaking easy."
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