Out of Work in America: Following Americans who found themselves out of work
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 12 news organizations from across the country — including the Arizona Daily Star — 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.
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 Arizona Daily Star, catalogued 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.
She 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.
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Tucson certified sommelier Oscar Saenz lost both his jobs to COVID-19 and watched as his chosen field dissolved around him. Star reporter Andi Berlin followed his quest to survive and chart a new course.
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After being laid off via group Zoom meeting, Evetta Applewhite decided she never wanted to experience that again and launched one entrepreneurial venture after another.
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Because she made too much last year to qualify for Medicaid, Stephanie Fitzgerald resorts to delaying, skipping doses of her heart medication.
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'I don’t feel like the pandemic is over, because nothing is like it used to be. I’m reminded everywhere I go, every time I listen to the news. I’m reminded every time I see people wearing masks.'
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To keep money coming in, Al Ernst tries his hand at sanitizing carts at a grocery store and selling Mary Kay cosmetics.
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As President Trump ends a program that let families fleeing El Salvador and other countries temporarily live and work here, Nery Martinez worries about having to leave his adult children behind.
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'A lot of people are staying home all the time. And that's good. But when you're in the food and beverage business, you need people coming out and enjoying themselves.'
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'I’ve submitted over 100 applications since April. I could say maybe 20 of those called because they at least let you know where you stand. Not knowing is frustrating.'
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'This is all so hard. I had my security, working 30 years without stopping. This is the first time I ever applied for unemployment. I’ve never, ever lived off the government — always off my own hard work.'
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'As far as the job market goes in the future, it’s hard to say. People are finding new and different ways to work around the pandemic. And some people are stuck.'
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Marina Moya, 24, was a team lead at Caterpillar, a construction machinery and equipment company in South Texas. With production declining, Ms. Moya was let go in early May.
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With a few sources of income, Barbara Eckes, 61, thought she was doing pretty well financially when 2020 started. But once the pandemic started, she was down to her $327 monthly pension from service in the U.S. Army.
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As COVID-19 cases rise again in Arizona and Pima County, hospitals could become overburdened once more, leading to another crisis point.
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Arizona has $400 million in unspent CARES Act money, a $1 billion rainy-day fund and a projected $1.8 billion surplus. That can help thousands of families facing eviction or hunger.
The state Senate voted 25-4 Thursday for the first increase in Arizona's unemployment benefits since 2004.
