Out of work in America

Across the US, joblessness is changing millions of lives

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Steve Marcus

Nery Martinez, who lost his job as a bartender in the COVID-19 shutdown and is waiting to be called back, poses in the backyard of his Las Vegas home. Martinez worked the bar in Mr Chow, a restaurant in Caesars Palace.

Sun, Oct 25, 2020 (2 a.m.)

Editor’s note: Americans have endured economic crises before, but none quite like this. To capture the depths of the suffering, The New York Times teamed up with local news organizations across the country, including the Las Vegas Sun, to document the lives of a dozen Americans who found themselves out of work. For months, we followed them as they dialed unemployment hotlines, applied for hundreds of jobs and counted every dollar in their bank accounts for rent and food. All of it while trying to survive a pandemic. Some of their stories are recounted below; the Times' full, interactive package can be found by clicking here.

A conference call in which everyone on the line was told they were laid off. An email declaring that a restaurant had served its last meal. A phone call from the boss before work one morning saying to come in — and pack up all your things. In March and April, as the coronavirus began tearing through the country, Americans lost as many jobs as they did during the Great Depression and the Great Recession combined — 22 million jobs that were there one minute and gone the next.

A job is a paycheck, an identity, a civic stabilizer, a future builder. During a pandemic, a job loss erases all that, when it is needed the most.

In Kentucky, Kalyn Fiorella Burns, 35, told The Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer about spending nine hours a day on hold, just to get her first unemployment check. The Arizona Daily Star spoke with Oscar Elijo Saenz, a 26-year-old sommelier in Tucson, who by week seven of unemployment was considering working at a funeral parlor out of desperation.

For months, journalists at The Times and 11 other news outlets, including the Las Vegas Sun, cataloged how the dual blows of joblessness and the pandemic were changing the lives of a dozen Americans.

We give economic downturns names and dates to tame and box in their upheaval. And so the namelessness of this crisis both heightens its chaos and masks the scale of its devastation.

The effects of the Great Depression were plain to see as it unfolded 90 years ago: soup lines formed beneath storefront signs advertising free meals for the unemployed. The impact of millions of lost jobs today is less visible when so many are staying home. Social distancing has helped financial suffering hide.

Stephanie Fitzgerald, 36, was laid off in June. She was a software engineer with two master’s degrees making roughly $100,000 a year and raising three children in rural Frenchtown, Mont. By early October, she was still without a full-time job, and the waiting was taking a deep toll.

Fitzgerald was scraping by on unemployment benefits and the $220 a week she made delivering groceries. The bundles she delivered to strangers were more substantial than the bundles she brought home to her children.

“I’m probably the most educated grocery-delivery person, and I always thought, ‘What would they say if they knew an engineer is delivering their groceries?’ ” Fitzgerald said.

In recent days, Fitzgerald and her family were on the verge of homelessness. It had been four months since she was laid off. She broke down in tears at one point.

And then the next day, she got the call.

She ran up the stairs to shout the news.

— Manny Fernandez, The New York Times

Click to enlarge photo

Nery Martinez is shown with his wife, Rosa Ramos, his daughter Kary, 17, and son Erick, 14, in the backyard of their home Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2020. Martinez lost his job as a bartender in the COVID-19 shutdown and is waiting to be called back.

A couple weeks became months on end

Losing his job was bad enough. Now he’s worried about being forced out of the country. Nery Martinez, a 43-year-old immigrant from El Salvador, is among 400,000 Nevadans who were laid off when the tourism industry came to a standstill because of casino closures. His wife is also on furlough. We first spoke with Martinez in July in Las Vegas. The interviews were conducted in Spanish and translated into English.

I’ve been working at Caesars Palace for six years. I’m a bartender, unemployed. I’ve been in Las Vegas for over 20 years. We closed March 14, right before they shut down the whole city. That was my last day of work. After that we received a note saying, “We’re going to be closed for a couple weeks,” but we’re still unemployed.

I’m very nervous about being laid off. The federal unemployment benefits will end soon, and missing a single check will be very hard.

We want to find work. The places we’ve visited can’t hire, because they still have furloughed employees waiting in line to get back. Places like restaurants are operating at half capacity, and they won’t hire outsiders.

My kids are worried, too, mainly because of school. How are they going to continue with online learning? How effective is it going to be?

Not only do we have to worry about a job and paying the bills, but we also have to take care of each other, because everything is different. If they don’t call me to work, I don’t know how we’re going to do it.

We saw the news talking about people who are going to lose their homes because of the pandemic. We lost ours because of the recession in 2008.

Where are we going to end up if we can’t pay for the house? We won’t be able to pay for an apartment; it’s the same cost. And with a family of five, I don’t think they’ll fit comfortably in a one-room unit.

I’m not used to being at home so long. It’s very hard, especially the first month. I felt restless, I walked around, sat and stood again. I didn’t know what to do. I felt useless.

Sometimes we watch a movie or go outside to play with the kids and our dog. I’m teaching my kids how to drive to pass the time. They, too, get very bored. They’re used to hanging out with friends and cousins, who they now only communicate with by phone. I see them, and sometimes they just sit there, staring.

September: ‘Waiting blindly’

We are struggling to pay our bills, but thank God our health hasn’t suffered. The bar I worked at hasn’t reopened, unfortunately. We’re waiting blindly.

Sometimes one feels afflicted, desperate, because we want to work. We don’t want unemployment benefits, free money for no work. We want to feel useful. At the beginning of the pandemic, I thought we would face things as they came, but there have been some stressful weeks, such as when the additional $600 federal unemployment benefits ran out. You begin to wonder how you’re going to afford rent and electricity.

My mother was sick recently. It wasn’t COVID-19. However, I felt desperation and agony, because I wanted to help her. My siblings and I send her money for medicine and food. It doesn’t matter if I’ve had little money, I’ve sent her what I can. I wish I could send her more, but I can’t.

Now that it’s September, it feels like we’ve already lost the year. We’re not going to accomplish any of the goals we set in January. Our dreams are now on hold. I don’t see an end to the pandemic anytime soon. The only thing that might save us is a vaccine, but even then, that might not come until next year.

I had set a goal to fix my house, and I wanted to study to get a G.E.D.-equivalent degree, but all of that implies money. I have all the time in the world to accomplish that, but there’s no money.

October: ‘They want us out’

We’re still waiting. They haven’t told us how long it will be before we can return to work. Finding a new job has been difficult, especially in the resorts, which have a lot of people waiting like us.

There’s hope with the new casinos opening, such as the Virgin Hotel, where my wife used to work when it was the Hard Rock. She should be one of the first employees called back.

My unemployment benefits just expired. I’ve applied for an extension, but I don’t think I’ll receive money this week or the next.

The other sad update is that the president got a green light to end the T.P.S. program (which has allowed families who fled El Salvador and other countries to temporarily live and work legally in the United States). It’s frustrating, tacking that worry onto our current struggles.

This is another blow for my family. We’re struggling. Imagine instead of receiving help, they throw something else at us.

The courts had stopped President Trump, but now he has a green light if he wins reelection, which I hope he doesn’t.

We started at the bottom. One way or another, one must start from the bottom and climb little by little. But right now, instead of helping us, they want us out.

Thousands of families, more than 7,000 in Nevada, will be destroyed. We don’t know what we will do with our children, who are American citizens. If we take them to El Salvador, they will lose their studies. If they stay, they’ll be alone, without monetary or moral support.

We pay taxes, we contribute to the economy. We’re hardworking, law-abiding people. We do things the right way. We must keep our legal status.

My daughter, who turned 18 two days ago, educates her classmates about T.P.S. when she gets a chance. She’s very aware of what’s at stake.

I can’t vote, but I wouldn’t vote for someone who doesn’t want us here. She will cast her ballot for Joe Biden, “aportando su granito de arena” — contributing her grain of sand.

If Trump wins, we have no more hope.

— Ricardo Torres-Cortez, Las Vegas Sun

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