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.
"You put your resume out there and you get nothing," she said.
In the region, manufacturing has lost 9,400 jobs in one year, including 2,400 within city limits.
Laid-off lawyers like Daman don't need federal statistics to understand the gravity of 15,300 area jobs lost, year over year, in business and professional services, with nearly 5,000 gone in the city.
Unemployment cascades. It washed away 14,600 local positions in retailing, transportation, and trade, as people are too scared to shop. Stores close, deliveries slow, and a trucking depot, such as the one in Tacony, shuts down.
More people in retail and trade lost jobs in Pennsylvania, but on a percentage basis, Camden, Gloucester and Burlington Counties together had the biggest decline.
"I loved my job," said Maria Robb of South Philadelphia. She worked for Boscov's - now recently emerged from bankruptcy - and was laid off in January along with all store-level public-relations people.
"It's just sad," she said.
Job hunting
The official start of the current recession, most experts agree, was December 2007 - a recession that began as the housing market collapsed and real estate values tumbled. Then Wall Street banks and the entire global economy were rocked as complicated financial bundles, many built on the presumption that real estate always appreciates, lost value.
On Nov. 22, 2007, Keith Bradford of Cheltenham lost his job in the mortgage industry at a company in New Jersey. He was one of the early casualties.
"I cried when I lost that job," he said.
Bradford had been working at the company for 10 years, earning as much as $81,000 a year, enough to buy a house in Cheltenham Township and to send his daughter to Catholic school. Even as the economy was slowing, Bradford snagged a job at Prudential Insurance Co. in Horsham.
But it paid less than two-thirds of his previous salary. He took a part-time retail job so his wife, Kim, could stay home with their two young children.
The insurance company laid him off in January 2008.
Now he's trying to figure out how to make a monthly mortgage payment of $1,931 on the $2,000 a month he brings in on unemployment benefits. His part-time retail job has to pay for all the rest.
"It's an end to how you used to live your life," said Bradford.
On March 16, in an effort to give back and stay sharp, the Bradfords ran a modest resource fair for unemployed people at the LaMott Community Center in Cheltenham, a few blocks from the Philadelphia border.
Pennsylvania: Mixed news
In Philadelphia, unemployment has reached 9.4 percent - an unsurprising statistic given some of the city's distressed neighborhoods. Yet in terms of employment, Philadelphia remains the engine pulling the region, with one in four people in the eight-county area working here.
More than half of the people who are employed in the city - not necessarily who live in the city - work in economic sectors that are fairly stable. These include government, hospitality, education, and health.
That's why Paul Levy, head of the Center City District, which cleans and markets downtown Philadelphia, remains optimistic.
"The job loss in the city is not as bad as the region, and the region isn't as bad as the country," Levy said.
