99 Weeks Later,
Jobless Have Only Desperation
Published: August 2, 2010 - New York Times
BRATTLEBORO, Vt. — Facing eviction from her Tennessee apartment after several
months of unpaid rent, Alexandra Jarrin packed up whatever she could fit into
her two-door coupe recently and drove out of town.
Ms. Jarrin, 49, wound up at a motel here, putting down $260 she had managed
to scrape together from friends and from selling her living room set, enough for
a weeklong stay. It was essentially all the money she had left after her
unemployment benefits expired in March. Now she is facing a previously
unimaginable situation for a woman who, not that long ago, had a corporate job
near New York City and was enrolled in a graduate business school, whose sticker
is still emblazoned on her back windshield.
“Barring a miracle, I’m going to be in my car,” she said.
Ms. Jarrin is part of a hard-luck group of jobless Americans whose members
have taken to calling themselves “99ers,” because they have exhausted the
maximum 99 weeks of unemployment insurance benefits that they can claim.
For them, the resolution recently of the
lengthy Senate impasse over extending jobless benefits was no balm. The
measure renewed two federal programs that extended jobless benefits in this recession
beyond the traditional 26 weeks to anywhere from 60 to 99 weeks, depending on
the state’s unemployment rate. But many jobless have now exceeded those limits.
They are adjusting to a new, harsh reality with no income.
In June, with long-term unemployment at record levels, about 1.4 million
people were out of work for 99 weeks or more, according to the Bureau of
Labor Statistics. Not all of them received unemployment benefits, but for
many of those who did, the modest payments were a lifeline that enabled them to
maintain at least a veneer of normalcy, keeping a roof over their heads, putting
gas in their cars, paying electric and phone bills.
Without the checks, many like Ms. Jarrin, who lost her job as director of
client services at a small technology company in March 2008, are beginning to
tumble over the economic cliff. The last vestiges of their former working-class
or middle-class lives are gone; it is inescapable now that they are indigent.
Ms. Jarrin said she wept as she drove away from her old life last month,
wondering if she would ever be able to reclaim it.
“At one point, I thought, you know, what if I turned the wheel in my car and
wrecked my car?” she said.
Nevertheless, the political appetite to help people like Ms. Jarrin appears
limited. Over the last few months, 99ers have tried to organize to press
Congress to provide an additional tier of unemployment insurance. But the
political potency of fears about the skyrocketing deficit has drowned them out.
The notion that unemployment benefits discourage recipients from finding work
has also crept into Republican
arguments against extensions. As a result, the plight of 99ers was notably
absent from the recent debate in the Senate.
Senator Debbie
Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan, is now working on a bill to help those in
the group, a spokesman, Miguel Ayala, said, but the chances of providing them
with additional weeks of benefits seem dim.
“It’s going to be extremely hard to pass,” said Andrew Stettner, deputy
director of the National Employment Law Project. “We barely got
60 votes to keep 99 weeks, so it’s even harder to get more.”
Other ways of helping the long-term jobless might have a better shot of
succeeding, Mr. Stettner said, like a temporary jobs program or assistance for
emergency needs.
Ms. Jarrin ping-pongs between resolve and despair. She received her last
unemployment check in the third week of March, putting her among the first wave
of 99ers. Her two checking accounts now show negative balances (she has
overdrafts on both). Her cellphone has been ringing incessantly with calls from
the financing company for her car loan. Her vehicle is on the verge of being
repossessed.
It is a sickening plummet, considering that she was earning $56,000 a year in
her old job, enjoyed vacationing in places like Mexico and the Caribbean, and
had started business school in 2008 at Iona
College.
Ms. Jarrin had scrabbled for her foothold in the middle class. She graduated
from college late in life, in 2003, attending classes while working full time.
She used to believe that education would be her ticket to prosperity, but is now
bitter about what it has gotten her.
“I owe $92,000 for an education which is basically worthless,” she said.
Last year she moved to Brentwood, Tenn., south of Nashville, in search of
work. After initially trying to finish her M.B.A. program remotely, she dropped
out because of the stress from her sinking finances. She has applied for
everything from minimum-wage jobs to director positions.
She should have been evicted from her two-bedroom apartment several months
ago, but the process was delayed when flooding gripped middle Tennessee in May.
In mid-July, a judge finally gave her 10 days to vacate.
Helped by some gas cards donated by a church, she decided to return to this
quiet New England town, where she had spent most of her adult life. She figured
the health care safety net was better, as well as the job market.
She contacted a local shelter but learned there was a waiting list. Welfare
is not an option, because she does not have young children. She says none of her
three adult sons are in a position to help her.
A friend wired her $200 while she was driving from Tennessee, enabling her to
check into a motel along the way and helping to pay for her stay here. But Ms.
Jarrin doubts that much more charity is coming.
“The only help I’m going to get is from myself,” she said. “I’m going to have
to take care of me. That has to be through a job.”
So, in her drab motel room, Ms. Jarrin has been spending her days surfing the
Internet, applying for jobs.
Lining the shelves underneath the television are her food supplies: rice and
noodles that Ms. Jarrin mixes with water in the motel’s ice bucket and heats up
in a microwave; peanut butter and jelly; a loaf of white bread.
Ms. Jarrin still has food stamps, which she qualified for in Tennessee. But
she is required to report her move, which will cut them off, so she will have to
reapply in Vermont.
She has been struggling with new obstacles, like what to do when an address
is required in online applications. She is worried about what will happen when
her cellphone is finally cut off, because then any calls to the number she sent
out with her résumés will disappear into a netherworld.
The news, however, has not been all bad. She had her first face-to-face
interview in more than a year, for a coordinator position at a nonprofit drop-in
center, on Monday.
And last Thursday, she got her first miracle, when an old friend from New
York sent by overnight mail $300 in cash, enough for another week in purgatory.