NYT - Out of Work in America

[Roland99]

Link to tweet

As you go to work today realize that millions of Americans would do anything to be in your shoes. We teamed up with news organizations across America to capture joblessness in 2020. Please take a few minutes to read.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/22/us/pandemic-unemployment-covid.html

Americans have endured economic crises before but none quite like this one. To capture the depths of the suffering, The New York Times teamed up with local news organizations across the country earlier in the year to document the lives of a dozen Americans who found themselves out of work.

For months, we followed them as they dialed unemployment hotlines, applied to hundreds of jobs and counted every dollar in their bank accounts for rent and food. All of it while trying to survive a pandemic.


* She had Plan A. Now, it’s Plans B through Z

* Laid Off With a Baby on the Way

* Two Master’s Degrees but Out of Work

* Broken Promises From One Job After Another

* Her Job Was a New Beginning — and Then She Lost it

* A Funny Guy in an Un-funny Time

* From a Promising Career to a Dwindling Savings Account

* Watching Every Penny

* ‘I Hope They Put Themselves in Our Shoes’

* For a War Veteran, a Different Kind of Training

* A Couple Weeks Became Months on End

* A Career in Hospitality Now on Hold

Gut-wrenching. Heart-breaking. So many stories like theirs.

A former co-worker I still keep in touch with reached out to me a month ago. He’d still not received ANY unemployment from the state of FL. Had been laid off for about 3 months. Had the most seniority in his dept and he and another more senior person were let go and two younger ones kept.

Said he’d been falling into depression. He’s married with 4 kids.

I helped him a little a few times and then he shared good news a couple weeks ago that he got a job better than he’d had before. I was so thrilled for him

But so many still without any prospects struggling to not just get by but struggling to survive!

[Delphinus]

1. Ah,

the stories of each; so much to say and feeling with them. Thank you.