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Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wayners who wrote (77215)	8/17/2012 1:41:40 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 103300

There are the roughly 1,600 résumés that Byron Reeves has sent out since he lost his job in accounting nearly four years ago, and the paltry 10 or so interviews they have produced. There is the $300 check that Yundra Thomas could not write to send his daughter to band camp, because he has been out of work for six months. Each week, Mr. Reeves and Mr. Thomas gather with 40 or so other unemployed workers in a small, barren and fluorescent-lit room here, in a kind of self-help program that is part of California’s official effort to help residents find jobs. Most have been unemployed for months or years. Time spent with them at several gatherings over many months reveals a postrecession landscape where grim frustration battles with the simple desire to find a way out. They were once advertising executives, engineers, social workers, teachers and purchasing managers. Now they come week after week, dressed for the office, carrying binders full of résumés and leads for potential jobs. They refine what they call their “60-second commercial” — a way to pitch themselves to nearly anyone they meet. When the three-hour meetings end, they mosey over, some reluctantly, to a table packed with day-old bread donated by a supermarket. With a state unemployment rate of 10.7 percent, California officials struggle to find ways to get people back to work. In the sprawling suburbs east of Los Angeles that make up the Inland Empire, the job market seems more upbeat than it has been for months, but unemployment remains at 12.6 percent. “You come in thinking you know everything, because you’ve been working for years,” Mr. Reeves, 55, said after one recent meeting. “You think you’ll bounce back quickly. Then, after a while, you get nothing and realize that in your entire career you’ve only had three or four jobs. So maybe asking other people what they’re doing would help.” Finding a job is particularly difficult for people like those who gather here each week. These are not unskilled workers looking for entry-level jobs. They are men and women in their 40s and 50s who were midlevel managers with salaries that made them comfortable enough to buy homes and take vacations. Nearly all have college diplomas, and some have advanced degrees. The group, called Experience Unlimited in a nod to its members’ abilities, functions as much as a support group as a training ground; participants offer each other encouragement that the next interview will turn out better as quickly as they exchange tips on résumé writing and networking. Less educated workers are still much more likely than college graduates to find themselves among the long-term unemployed, but that is little comfort to those like Mr. Reeves and Mr. Thomas. At times, even with the most optimistic intentions, job-seeking can feel almost crushingly absurd. One recent morning, a human-resource manager for the local branches of the Lowe’s home-improvement chain made a pitch for floor sales jobs. “What we’re looking for is someone who enjoys interacting with customers and closing the sale, so as long as you have some experience with customer service, we have a lot of opportunities,” the recruiter, Nikki Koontz, said in a cheery voice. Skeptical looks were obvious on many faces in the room. “Won’t you just say we’re overqualified?” one woman wondered. “Is there really the ability to move up the ranks?” another asked. Some softened when Ms. Koontz said that she, too, had been laid off not too long ago, and that her job at Lowe’s involved a pay cut. nytimes.com