MICHAEL S. WIRTZ / Staff Photographer
Laid-off workers milled about the parking lot of Reynolds Packaging Group in Downingtown last month after turning in their I.D. badges. The firm is mothballing the plant, which employed 150 people. Upheaval in the job market has hit Chester County hard. Continuing claims for unemployment benefits were up 114 percent from two years ago.
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Upheaval in the Region’s Job Market
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In epidemic of layoffs, no one is immune
Joblessness spreads in Pa. and N.J., caused by an ill economy. Any cure looks to be slow and painful.
Seventy-two truck drivers and warehouse workers at the USF Holland truck terminal in the city's Tacony section are losing their jobs. The terminal closed Friday.
In Blue Bell, a Montgomery County suburb where homes cost upwards of $800,000, three out of 10 neighbors in adjoining culs-de-sac are laid off.
In West Philadelphia's 5700 block of Spruce Street, in one of the city's zip codes hardest hit by unemployment, the block captain worries about prospects for the young men on his street - bleak, when unemployment among African American male teenagers stands at nearly 40 percent.
"I can't offer nothing to these kids," said Thommie Hampton. "You can't get a job."
In Cheltenham Township, a business-process manager laid off in January for the second time in two years struggles to reinvent himself - again - as his middle-class lifestyle slips away.
In Mount Ephraim, a young woman who graduated from Rutgers University in Camden last year is still looking for a librarian or government-research job this year. "It's pretty disheartening to apply for so many positions and get rejected," said Stephanie Kurek, 26. Older workers, willing to take pay cuts to stay employed, are competing with her for entry-level positions, she said.
If there is anything that these tales tell us, it is that misery is everywhere in the Delaware Valley. It crosses all geographic lines, all economic lines, all gender lines, all race lines, all age lines.
All these people, the unemployed executives in Blue Bell, the unemployed teenagers in West Philadelphia, the lawyers, the doctors, the truck drivers, and the managers have their own difficult and individual stories.
But collectively, their loss is our loss.
A burden for all
For every person out of work, $13,000 in monthly production is gone - that's $13,000 worth of unmade machinery, unwritten legal briefs, unchanged hotel linens, undelivered packages, unanswered phones, said economist Zandi.
He calculated that statistic by looking at individual monthly shares of the gross domestic product.
In the broad Philadelphia region, with nearly 210,100 unemployed, that's a stunning $2.7 billion in monthly production gone from the economy.
And for each person out of work each month, roughly $1,200 goes unspent, based on labor expert Price's back-of-the-napkin calculation of average monthly wages, minus average unemployment benefits.
That's making do with last year's Easter dress, dropping piano lessons, putting off dental work, driving on worn tires, and skipping Friday night at the neighborhood diner.
In this area, the unemployed are not spending $252.1 million a month - a figure that increases to $378.2 million as money trickles through the economy. It's what happens when, for example, the local car mechanic doesn't order new tires from his supplier and the restaurateur needs fewer steaks from his purveyor.
"It's the disappearance of the middle class," said Jeffrey Daman, an associate lawyer who lost his job at Dechert L.L.P. in Philadelphia on Feb. 27. His former firm announced 120 more layoffs last month.
What started out as a meltdown in the mortgage industry, with loan processors and mortgage brokers losing their work as early as 2007, has now spread to the so-called safe sectors of "eds and meds" - education and health.
There have been layoff announcements by Fox Chase Cancer Center, Frankford Hospital, and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, along with Northeastern Hospital, all in the city. Crozer-Keystone Health System began laying off 400 from its suburban hospitals in January, and South Jersey Hospital in Vineland filed a state notice to lay off 123 staffers, effective last Tuesday.
The decline in the housing market has hurt construction in the region - on a percentage basis, no other sector has lost more workers. There are 10 percent fewer people working in construction than there were a year ago, according to the U.S. Labor Department.
In the city and Pennsylvania suburbs, 9,800 carpenters, electricians, and plumbers lost their jobs, along with people like Sharon Smith of Philadelphia, a construction-office manager laid off in December.
