For Americas "99ers," jobs crisis is hard to escape

Unemployed operations manager Mary Kay Coyne looks at an employment website at her residence in Sewell, New Jersey, July 7, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Tim Shaffer

SEWELL, New Jersey

Mary Kay Coyne has just filed what she says is her 1,862nd job application since being thrown out of work three years ago.
She is one of millions of Americans whose unemployment benefits have expired -- after 99 weeks in many states -- as the United States suffers its highest level of long-term unemployment since 1948.
Coyne had to move in with a friend after benefit payments ran out last year. Now she gets by on Medicaid -- U.S. health insurance for the poor -- and food stamps, contributing what little she can to her friend's household costs.





"You're 56-years old and you feel like you are sitting on a big pile of nothing," said Coyne, who spends about four hours a day sending out resumes.
"For the better part of a year, I have something sitting on my chest. It's not a medical condition. It is that pressure of 'Is this going to end, when is this going to end?'"

Unlike in much of Europe, the safety net of the U.S. welfare system times out for the long-term unemployed. The federal government and many states have provided extra help for those caught up in the worst labor market in decades but the U.S. debt crisis rules out further extension of the programs.
Coyne is typical of many middle-class Americans now struggling to get by.

She used to earn $70,000 a year as an administrative assistant until her firm began to downsize and left Coyne among the growing number of Americans struggling to live on unemployment benefits, and eventually on minimal food aid.

Now Washington is considering cuts to social welfare programs to shrink a swelling budget deficit.
It may not only be Americans like Coyne who feel the pain. Some economists say the cuts could make it even harder to shrink long-term unemployment that damages the wider economy by dampening consumer demand and lowering output.

In 2010, an estimated 3.9 million unemployed Americans exhausted unemployment benefits, according to the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group that campaigns for lower-wage workers.
More than 14 percent of the U.S. unemployed have been out of a job for 99 weeks, or longer.
May saw the second-highest percentage and outright number of Americans out of a job for that period or more since weekly data was first collected in 1967. The highest was in April. Payrolls data for June, due on Friday, is unlikely to show a major change in the labor market after the overall jobless rate rose to 9.1 percent in May, economists say.

Many so-called "99ers" subsist on social services like food stamps and Medicaid, programs now in danger of deep cuts demanded by many Republicans in Congress in exchange for allowing the federal government to go deeper into debt.

"An increase in demand for social services is what you would expect in a downturn of this magnitude and so the fact that they are cutting the social safety net is quite perplexing," said Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist at the University of California at Berkeley. "We've just never seen (long-term unemployment) at these levels, period."

Forty six percent of those looking for work have been jobless for six months or more and the average length of job searches that eventually result in a hiring has doubled to 10 weeks between 2007 and 2010.

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Syrian troops 'widening' crackdown Kill 6 civilians in Ariha

Syrian refugees talk with a Turkish soldier in a refugee camp in the Turkish border town of Boynuegin in Hatay province yesterday.

 

 

 

Syrian security forces are reportedly widening an operation in the north of the country aimed at cracking down on anti-government protests.

Troops pushed towards the northern town of Maarat al-Numaan after detaining hundreds of people in a sweep through villages near the town of Jisr al-shaghur.



Meanwhile, army killed six civilians yesterday as it swept through villages around the flashpoint northwestern town of Jisr al-Shughur, a rights activist said.


"The armed forces are continuing their operations and the sweep of the villages near Jisr al-Shughur," which the army took by force Sunday, the activist said.


Refugees have poured across the Syrian border into neighbouring Turkey to escape the government's operation, the site of an intense military takeover on Sunday.


Nearly 7,000 Syrians have so far crossed the border with Turkey to escape the violence, and an estimated 10,000 more are waiting for the opportunity to cross.

Witnesses said those still in Syria had taken shelter among trees near the border since forces moved into the northwestern province of Idlib.

The uprising, now in its third month, seeks an end to Bashar al-Assad's one-party rule, more political freedom and an end to corruption and poverty.

Al Jazeera's Anita McNaught, in Guvecci on the Turkey-Syria border, spoke to Syrian refugees inside the camp in Turkey.

One of them said he saw two military helicopters hovering over Jisr al-Shughur and heard reports of indiscriminate shooting.

Another Syrian gave this account after Al Jazeera smuggled a camera into the refugee camp: "We were besieged in Jisr yesterday.
"We couldn't leave. They shot at everyone, I was shot in the chest, My cousin, who was with me, died.
"They cut our electricity and water. We were left with nothing, that is why we came to the Turkey border."

Syrian state television said army units fought "armed groups" on Sunday, but residents and activists said troops had clashed with mutinous soldiers defending the town alongside residents.

"Army divisions entered Jisr al-Shughur and purged the state hospital of armed groups," the television said.
"Two members of the armed organisations were killed, large numbers of them arrested, and lethal weapons in their possession were seized."

On the diplomatic front, a spokesman for David Cameron, the British prime minister, said on Monday that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish leader, had expressed support for Britain's efforts to put pressure on Syria at the UN Security Council.

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