Joe Cabusao has no regular job but still plans to get married on Sunday–and even wants to start a family.
The 33-year-old Chicagoan was laid off three years ago from his $36,000-a-year job as a graphics designer, and had survived on freelance work until “a dry season” hit in July. Since then his fiance, Michele Anderson, an account executive, has supported them.
While Cabusao would like to work full time, he said the few offers he’s received only paid entry-level salaries: “I was just recently offered $27,000, and I was like, `You’ve got to be kidding me.'” So he has decided to take his chances as a freelancer.
Jobs–both the lack and the quality of them–have become the No. 1 economic issue in the presidential election. And some economists believe that the employment market is undergoing a fundamental structural change.
A growing number of jobs are being “outsourced,” or moved to countries overseas such as India and China, and pay scales have fallen.
Another concern is the low number of high-paying jobs being created. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says that the country has not adequately educated Americans in the kinds of technological and scientific skills required for jobs in a global economy.
Pay hardly seems enough
People like Cabusao and Dave Brunkow are finding that jobs simply do not pay what they used to.
Last week, Brunkow, 51, of Machesney Park, Ill., just north of Rockford, stood in line with hundreds of job seekers at the state’s employment office in Evanston. They were applying for 170 positions paying anywhere from $21,000 to $50,000 a year at the renovated Hotel Orrington.
Scheduled to reopen in late October, the hotel eventually will employ 240 people.
Brunkow hopes to reclaim his old job as bell captain. He worked at the hotel for seven years before it was sold and then closed in January for renovations.
Afterward, he landed a job as a bellman driver at the Sheraton Chicago Northwest in Arlington Heights. That job was a step down from bell captain and was reflected in a $30,000 cut in his annual pay.
Since then, he said he has had no luck finding anything that pays better.
“We’re creating jobs that pay $16,000 to $20,000 a year,” Brunkow said of the U.S. economy. “I’m a family of five. That’s the poverty level,” Brunkow said. “My kids have good grandparents, thank god.”
Yet Brunkow has to compete against those clamoring for those jobs.
The hotel’s new general manager, Joseph Violi, said he expected 1,500 people to seek jobs, but state employment officials said the final count could be twice that many.
Benefits draw interest
Some applicants weren’t as concerned about the pay as they were about benefits such as health insurance.
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Consider Angela Pierson, 39, of Evanston, who interviewed for a spot in the hotel’s accounting department.
“I need insurance,” said Pierson, a single mother who works part time for a collection agency.
While her children, a 6-year-old daughter and 19-year-old son away at college, have health insurance through their father, she has none.
Pierson recently reduced her workload to part time, figuring, “Why not?” since she wasn’t getting benefits as a full-time employee.
She decided to work part time so that she could pick her daughter up from school.
“I like what I do,” said Pierson. “I have perfect attendance at my job. But I expect some type of benefits that can help me.”
White-collar blues
In today’s job climate, former senior executives like Bob Dean say they can’t even get a line on a full-time job.
A former high-level executive in the software industry and a senior management consultant both here and abroad, Dean hasn’t worked full time since January 2001.
“I’ve had anywhere from three to 10 opportunities at any given time over the last three years and none have panned out to be full-time employment,” Dean said.
Dean once earned upwards of $150,000 a year. Now he makes one-sixth of his former salary working as an independent contractor, he said.
He and his wife, Christine Wren, an executive for a convention management company in Chicago, rent an apartment in the South Loop.
They have blown through their retirement savings and most of their assets, and are considering selling their home in Iowa.
“We rent a place here in Chicago because this is where the money is,” said Dean. “There’s no money to be made where we actually own a home.”
Wren and Dean married last October. When they first met in London, Dean was at the top of his game. Today, Wren is the primary breadwinner.
“She has been a wonderful supporter of mine throughout these difficult times,” Dean said.
“When you meet somebody and they have a certain income … and all of a sudden their world gets pulled out from underneath them, your perception has a tendency to change. I’ve been the happiest guy to have that kind of support.”
Despite his troubles, Dean doesn’t blame the government for his inability to find work.
“You have to be optimistic. You have to be positive that you, with your experience, can contribute to something, to have something grow, to make something better.”
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COMING MONDAY: Labor Day is no holiday for many in today’s economy.