So many workers, so few jobs

Most people looking for a job are made to feel invisible. But early in November thousands of people lined up outside a building on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan to apply for a job at a new candy store. Suddenly, it was like shining a spotlight on the masses of people who are jobless.

The New York Times reported Nov. 4 that the crowd, which was mostly young, Black and Latin@, began showing up at 1 a.m. to apply for fewer than 200 positions at a new Mars Inc.’s M&M store at Times Square. Only 65 of the positions were full-time.

The Times said people were lured by an advertisement that said the company would be hiring “on-the-spot.” But so many people showed up that the company stopped interviewing people after talking to several dozen and told the others waiting in line to mail in an application or apply for a job online.

“This is what unemployment looks like in New York City,” a woman in the crowd told the Times. “I wanted to cry.”

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced this month that the country’s unemployment rate had fallen to 4.4 percent at the beginning of November. That means 6.7 million people are seeking work and don’t have a job. But the figure doesn’t include those with part-time jobs, the homeless, undocumented workers, and people who have given up looking for work. Almost half of all Black men in New York City were unemployed in 2003. (Community Service Society, February 2004)

The underlying optimism of the Labor Department’s announcement ignores the reality that hundreds of thousands of people are being laid off around the country every month.

The New York State Labor Department also touted New York City’s unemployment rate of 4.5 percent. “In September 2006, the New York City rate was below the national rate (4.6 percent) for the first time since August 1988,” the department said in a press release. It rattled off a list of industries that have seen a jump in employment, including scientific research and development (R&D), up more than 9 percent, and utilities, up almost 8 percent. At the same time manufacturing and transportation jobs have dropped more than 2 percent over the one-month period.

While the Labor Department portrays the numbers as good news, the people looking for work at the candy store show the truth behind the statistics. Some of those in line told the Times they were hoping to get a job that offered full-time work or a little more money than they were currently making: Mars’s starting pay is $10.75 per hour. And in the most expensive city in the country, that won’t pay the rent, let alone raise a family.