Sep 10, 2009 6:18 pm US/Central
Jobless Illinoisans Worry As Benefits Run Dry
Almost 700,000 People Are Now Out Of Work In Illinois
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
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Artist Carole Cantrell lost her steady job, and her unemployment benefits ran out in July. She is now struggling to make ends meet with no health insurance and no reliable paycheck.
CBS
We used to cringe when job statistics came out, but lately the news has been better. The Labor Department says there were 26,000 fewer unemployment claims last week than the week before. There are now only about 6 million people getting benefits.
But if you're out of work, those improving numbers don't help. The recession has been going on so long, many are actually running out of unemployment.
CBS 2's Kristyn Hartman reports that as many as 12,000 Illinois resident exhausted their benefits last week alone, and we could be hitting 40,000 by the end of the year. We met someone who's already walking that path.
Carole Cantrel is an artist who is working hard to find a job, but day-to-day life is becoming a harder task constantly.
"I'm just guessing after Labor Day, it will get better," Cantrel said.
When Cantrel lost her steady job, she collected unemployment benefits. They ran out in July.
"I was getting $51 a week," Cantrel said, adding that while it's not much, "I'll take any piece and add it to my to pile."
Cantrel said when she lost her benefits, it was the equivalent of losing her safety net.
"It's very precarious," she said.
Now, Cantrel has no reliable paycheck or health insurance.
Not knowing when the next freelance job will come along forces frugality. There is no new TV, and no air conditioning. After all, Cantrel has to shell out more than $600 per month for her apartment on West Altgeld Street.
The street gets its name from John Peter Altgeld, an Illinois governor in the 1890s. But in a bitter irony for Cantrel, the literal German translation of the name is "old money."
"I called it 'nein geld'," or no money, Cantrel said.
Cantrel is far from alone. The unemployment rate in Illinois is now about 10 percent. And that figure might not even tell the whole story.
"If you count all of the people who are working part time and want to work full time, if you count all of the people who started looking for work, got discouraged -- what we call discouraged workers -- and left the labor force, the number is much higher," said University of Chicago economist Allen Sanderson.
Consider that, then this – Sanderson says the typical aid to the jobless runs about nine months.
So it stands to reason that if the unemployed don't find work, by year's end you'll see more cases like Cantrel's.
But the good news is that Sanderson says the economy is getting better. Even so, companies have downsized in the recession, and there is question about whether there will be jobs to go back to.
"Probably not the same jobs," Sanderson said.
But Cantrel doesn't think she's going to wait to find out.
"I'm having to train myself to think outside of the box," she said.
And here's a quick snapshot of the current job market: the Bureau of Labor stats says the number of job openings fell by more than two million, or 50 percent, since the June 2007 peak.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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