I’ve written several news stories in recent weeks about how Snohomish County’s economy appears to be picking up, especially on the job front.
Unemployment has been dropping a bit and a recent Manpower employment agency survey of local employers showed that a significant number of them planned to add workers during the next few months.
I’m starting to get a little nervous about these stories.
It’s not what you might be thinking — that newspapers only like to dwell on the bad news. No, it’s because of the phone call.
Whenever I write a story saying the job market’s improving, I get at least one call from someone who starts yelling at me and calling me a freaking idiot. Those aren’t the actual words he uses (it’s always a male), but I can’t use those words in a family newspaper.
The callers typically tell me that they don’t see one bit of improvement in the economy. They talk about how they’ve been doing everything possible to get a job and they just can’t find one. They want to know who is saying that more people are finding jobs. They think those people are lying. They think I’m lying.
I don’t mind telling you that I find these calls unnerving and a little difficult to figure out.
Or at least I did.
Chuck Morrison, a fishing buddy of mine who is interim director of the American Red Cross of Snohomish County, helped me understand why I’m getting these calls and why the callers are so angry.
"I think there are a lot of folks that don’t show up in the statistics anymore that are the discouraged job seekers," Morrison said.
These are people who are desperate because they’ve lost their unemployment benefits and they just can’t seem to find work or at least work that pays enough to cover their bills.
The Associated Press reported last week that economists say the weak job market is causing people to give up their searches and drop out of the labor pool at an unusual pace.
The share of the U.S. population working or actively seeking a job has fallen to 65.8 percent, the lowest level in 16 years.
Morrison noted that he sees this in spades in an agency program called Project Pride, which is designed to provide emergency help to people who are about to lose their electricity because they can’t pay.
During the first three months of this year, the program helped 362 families who were about to go without light and heat. That compares to 134 during the same period last year, Morrison said.
He noted that about 300 of those families had never been helped by his agency before. He added that while the project did help 362 families, a total of 3,090 callers wanted help.
Morrison said his story is not unusual. Other social service agencies and hospitals are spending dramatically more on charity care than they’d budgeted.
"There’s a huge increase in the number of people seeking assistance," he said. "I think a lot of the jobs folks are getting are service-sector jobs with far lower salaries to get through the month."
I get it now.
The improvements in the economy are encouraging signs, but we’ve still got a very long way to go.
At least we’re starting to head in the right direction.
Several readers liked last week’s column on lottery scams. A couple wanted to know why I didn’t include information about filing a complaint. I should have, and here it is.
You can call the Washington State Attorney General’s consumer division at 800-541-8898, or file a complaint online at www.atg.wa.gov/consumer/
Mike Benbow: 425-339-3459; benbow@heraldnet.com.
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