Many people are still struggling to find good high-paying jobs several years after the 2001 recession. An article in the Hartford Courant illustrates the problem by telling the job woes of a few individuals:
Laid off two years ago at age 62 from a bank vice president's job, he took the $7.50-an-hour job because his health insurance was running out. He felt lucky to find it.
"I'm getting good benefits," he said.
Spolec is one of hundreds of thousands of professionals who lost their jobs during the 2001 recession and its aftermath, a long jobless recovery.
They were caught in an unusual economic downdraft, a period marked less by the sheer number of people thrown out of work - 2.7 million in all, or about 2 percent of the workforce - as by unrelentingly high rates of long-term unemployment, economists say.
The article says the economy started adding jobs again in 2003 and while some people laid-off in 2001 have found jobs many of them are lower paying and unrelated to their previous careers.
These are the stories of Spolec and other professionals for whom weeks of unemployment stretched into months, then years.
They are largely overlooked in an economy where unemployment is trending down and things are looking up for many job seekers.
Like others in their predicament, they are no longer unemployed. They work "survival" jobs while trying to climb back into their fields.
Unfortunately, the jobless recovery seems to be continuing so people may have to hold on to these "survival" jobs a while longer. The high gas prices are certainly not helping consumers or the economy either.
