MNeagle
15th September 2010, 11:05 AM
FERNDALE, Michigan (Reuters) – Scott Stevenson was only 10 years old when he first heard grown-ups voice the gloomy words that, in retrospect, predicted the disappointing arc his life has taken.
"I remember them actually telling us that our generation would be the first not to be better off than our parents," said the 39-year-old Stevenson. "It was fifth grade and I remember thinking, 'How do you know?'"
Three decades later, the pessimistic prognostication he was so quick to dismiss as a boy now seems, as he put it, "like a prophecy."
Stevenson is one of the 14.9 million U.S. workers who are officially jobless, according to the latest statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor. More depressingly, he is also among the 6.2 million unfortunate enough to have been that way for 27 weeks or more -- a beleaguered cohort that the government dubs the "long-term unemployed."
Over the past four years, Stevenson has lost almost everything. His $38,000-a-year factory job as well as the three-bedroom home it helped him buy are gone. Two years ago, when his mortgage company finally foreclosed on him, he moved into the basement of his parents' home.
"I hate it," he said. "It's driving me nuts. I'm almost 40 years old and I'm not able to take care of myself. But I don't have any other option."
In June, after 99 weeks on the dole, his unemployment benefits ran out. He hasn't had to sell his truck and work tools -- yet -- and he recently picked up some temporary contract work that put a little cash in his pocket. But he spends most of his days at his parents' home, trawling the Internet for jobs that don't pan out or playing computer games -- "anything," he said, "that doesn't cost money."
On warm days, he takes his bike out for a ride around the neighborhood. It's an older subdivision than where he lived, filled with solid-looking but modestly sized brick homes.
It sits alongside I-696, a highway dedicated to Walter Reuther, the union organizer whose strikes against Ford Motor Co and General Motors in the early 1940s forced the U.S. car industry to recognize the United Auto Workers union. In the process, Reuther helped produce this country's blue-collar, middle class, a group whose prosperity helped shape the post-war U.S. economy and was, for decades, the envy of workers worldwide.
Reuther died in 1970 and the dream he helped create began unraveling soon thereafter as employment in manufacturing -- the sector that, together with construction, reliably sustained the blue-collar middle class -- steadily shrank.
But the U.S. recession and the nearly simultaneous restructuring of the auto industry have delivered the most savage one-two punch that class has absorbed in a generation. Of the more than 8 million U.S. jobs lost in the downturn, nearly half were in either manufacturing or construction -- higher-wage sectors that traditionally provided entry-level jobs that turned into well-paying careers jobs for people like Stevenson, whose formal education stopped after high school.
In a midterm election year, where the economy is issue No. 1, his plight and that of millions of men and women like him helps explain the sagging support for President Barack Obama's Democratic party, which is expected to see its majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate eroded in the November 2 vote.
One of the people voting Republican that day will be Stevenson's mom, 63-year-old Joan Stevenson. The daughter of a machinist and a self-described "Jack Kennedy Democrat," she voted for Obama in 2008 but has been disappointed by how little his administration's polices have helped unemployed workers like her son.
"The Democratic Party isn't what it used to be for us," she said. "The philosophy used to be if the Democratic Party was in power everybody got a piece of the pie, and if the Republicans were in power the rich got a piece of the pie. Now, nobody is getting a piece of the pie."
much more (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_blue_collar_red;_ylt=Aj_ALh2qqSFS3DTrh21C.ZKs0N UE;_ylu=X3oDMTNtZ2ludjJoBGFzc2V0A25tLzIwMTAwOTE1L3 VzX2JsdWVfY29sbGFyX3JlZARjY29kZQNtb3N0cG9wdWxhcgRj cG9zAzQEcG9zAzEEcHQDaG9tZV9jb2tlBHNlYwN5bl9oZWFkbG luZV9saXN0BHNsawNibHVlLWNvbGxhcnU-)
"I remember them actually telling us that our generation would be the first not to be better off than our parents," said the 39-year-old Stevenson. "It was fifth grade and I remember thinking, 'How do you know?'"
Three decades later, the pessimistic prognostication he was so quick to dismiss as a boy now seems, as he put it, "like a prophecy."
Stevenson is one of the 14.9 million U.S. workers who are officially jobless, according to the latest statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor. More depressingly, he is also among the 6.2 million unfortunate enough to have been that way for 27 weeks or more -- a beleaguered cohort that the government dubs the "long-term unemployed."
Over the past four years, Stevenson has lost almost everything. His $38,000-a-year factory job as well as the three-bedroom home it helped him buy are gone. Two years ago, when his mortgage company finally foreclosed on him, he moved into the basement of his parents' home.
"I hate it," he said. "It's driving me nuts. I'm almost 40 years old and I'm not able to take care of myself. But I don't have any other option."
In June, after 99 weeks on the dole, his unemployment benefits ran out. He hasn't had to sell his truck and work tools -- yet -- and he recently picked up some temporary contract work that put a little cash in his pocket. But he spends most of his days at his parents' home, trawling the Internet for jobs that don't pan out or playing computer games -- "anything," he said, "that doesn't cost money."
On warm days, he takes his bike out for a ride around the neighborhood. It's an older subdivision than where he lived, filled with solid-looking but modestly sized brick homes.
It sits alongside I-696, a highway dedicated to Walter Reuther, the union organizer whose strikes against Ford Motor Co and General Motors in the early 1940s forced the U.S. car industry to recognize the United Auto Workers union. In the process, Reuther helped produce this country's blue-collar, middle class, a group whose prosperity helped shape the post-war U.S. economy and was, for decades, the envy of workers worldwide.
Reuther died in 1970 and the dream he helped create began unraveling soon thereafter as employment in manufacturing -- the sector that, together with construction, reliably sustained the blue-collar middle class -- steadily shrank.
But the U.S. recession and the nearly simultaneous restructuring of the auto industry have delivered the most savage one-two punch that class has absorbed in a generation. Of the more than 8 million U.S. jobs lost in the downturn, nearly half were in either manufacturing or construction -- higher-wage sectors that traditionally provided entry-level jobs that turned into well-paying careers jobs for people like Stevenson, whose formal education stopped after high school.
In a midterm election year, where the economy is issue No. 1, his plight and that of millions of men and women like him helps explain the sagging support for President Barack Obama's Democratic party, which is expected to see its majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate eroded in the November 2 vote.
One of the people voting Republican that day will be Stevenson's mom, 63-year-old Joan Stevenson. The daughter of a machinist and a self-described "Jack Kennedy Democrat," she voted for Obama in 2008 but has been disappointed by how little his administration's polices have helped unemployed workers like her son.
"The Democratic Party isn't what it used to be for us," she said. "The philosophy used to be if the Democratic Party was in power everybody got a piece of the pie, and if the Republicans were in power the rich got a piece of the pie. Now, nobody is getting a piece of the pie."
much more (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_blue_collar_red;_ylt=Aj_ALh2qqSFS3DTrh21C.ZKs0N UE;_ylu=X3oDMTNtZ2ludjJoBGFzc2V0A25tLzIwMTAwOTE1L3 VzX2JsdWVfY29sbGFyX3JlZARjY29kZQNtb3N0cG9wdWxhcgRj cG9zAzQEcG9zAzEEcHQDaG9tZV9jb2tlBHNlYwN5bl9oZWFkbG luZV9saXN0BHNsawNibHVlLWNvbGxhcnU-)