Main Street

Working America Members in the New York Times

Readers of this blog may have found a familiar name and a familiar story in Bob Herbert’s New York Times column this Saturday.

Last summer, when Lynda Hiller told her story here, she and her husband were struggling to keep their home. She had been unable to work while she fought to survive breast cancer, and during that time her husband also lost his job. Things have not gotten better:

“He looked for two years,” Ms. Hiller said. “He applied every place he could, sometimes four or five times at the same company. He went everywhere, to every job fair you can think of, to every place where there was even a mention of an opening. But for every job that came available, there were 20 people or more who showed up for it.”

Last fall, Mr. Hiller took a part-time job as a dishwasher at a Red Lobster restaurant. “It’s a job,” Ms. Hiller said. “It’s not fancy. It’s not truck driving.”

And it was not enough for them to keep their home. Ms. Hiller lost her job at a bank when she became ill. With both paychecks gone, meeting the mortgage became impossible. The Hillers lost their home and are now living day to day. “If my husband can get 30 hours of work in a week, then maybe we can pay some bills,” Ms. Hiller said. “If he can’t, we can’t. We’ve downsized our lives so much.”

Things have looked up a little for Liz Lassiter since Kim McMurray described her situation last fall. She had been struggling with homelessness, but last week, she was able to host the gathering Herbert described. “She doesn’t earn a lot or get benefits,” Herbert writes, but she has found more regular work.

As Herbert says:

These are the kinds of stories you might expect from a country staggering through a depression, not the richest and supposedly most advanced society on earth. If these were exceptional stories, there would be less reason for concern. But they are in no way extraordinary. Similar stories abound throughout the United States.

Tags: unemployment, Working America