While banks worry about “shadow foreclosures” ”“ those that have not yet hit the market ”“ another shadow is being cast across employment.
More than a year ago, U.S. News & World Report had already found thousands of unemployed workers “backlogged” on waiting lists for help, along with community colleges that were running out of funding for retraining workers, their stimulus money from ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) eaten away by those who needed retraining.
Where are those people today? Joseph Tracy, senior vice president for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, spoke to Pattern for Progress in mid-June about the current housing market. What remained unspoken was where are the people who lived in those foreclosed homes? The same question can be asked about those who have lost their jobs, can”™t find another and have eventually run out of unemployment benefits.
With seven Workforce Investment Boards in the Hudson Valley ”“ Orange, Rockland, Sullivan, Dutchess, Yonkers, Mount Vernon and Westchester-Putnam ”“ as well as several agencies designed to help entrepreneurs and small business, is there hope for those whose jobs were eliminated because of budget constrains or have become obsolete or outsourced as a result of the Great Recession?
Richard Altman, president of the Workforce Investment Board at Dutchess Works, said WIBs devote a lot of energy training people. “Up to 2010, we”™ve been the recipient of regular WIB funds through the federal government and other significant funding from the Trade Adjustment Act, which specifically helped people affected by outsourcing.
“We spent $1.1 million in training alone for 370 people, but that training was outsourced to others, either to a private or training school. We also had some on-the-job training for workers who needed to upgrade their skills in order to retain their jobs. In terms of counseling expenses, we spent $250,000 in career counseling to help the unemployed pinpoint where skills were strongest or where they were deficient. We also looked at different industries to see which best suited their skills.”
The Dutchess Works and Workforce Investment Board in Poughkeepsie had more than 7,500 people come through its system in 2010. “Of those, 3,250 left and half of them left for jobs. We did find work for a lot of people and we trained a lot of people.”
Altman said traffic in 2011 has been “somewhat of a downturn, but not a dramatic change. We are in a stubborn unemployment situation, with a significant amount of people going through training and trying to move forward. We will undoubtedly be resource-stretched because we did receive additional federal funding through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act last year, which we will not see this year.”
Don Lucarello, manager for the New York State Department of Labor who travels throughout Dutchess, Ulster and Rockland, said WIBs are not affected by the state budget, since the funds come from the U.S. Department of Labor. “We are an unusual branch in that we are federally funded, but a critical part of our operations are based on Washington legislation, not the state. Our fate is decided there.”
Lucarello said for many workers, the transition to the electronic world has become a must if they are to be desirable hire-ables. “We hold several workshops in the ”˜works”™ offices around the counties,” he said. “One of those classes offered is to teach people how to use social networking to find employment. They are usually taught by people in their 20s because many of the displaced workers are over the age of 40, where the technology, while they may have contact with it, was not as extensive on the job, nor did they need to do social networking. It is key in helping them locate potential jobs.”
Dutchess Works and its WIB have a satellite program in the Beacon for younger people, up to age 24. “It was originally age 21, but because of the market, we”™ve raised the age limit to 24,” Lucarello said.
Works Career Centers are in Orange, with three locations in the cities of Newburgh, Middletown and Port Jervis; Westchester/Putnam”™s One Stop is in Carmel; Rockland”™s Tomorrow”™s Workplace is in Spring Valley; Mount Vernon has its own Employment Center; Ulster Work Career Center is in Kingston. Dutchess Works is in Poughkeepsie, with a satellite for workers 24 and under in Beacon.
While WIB programs had traditionally been geared toward those who had no income or low income and had a primary focus on veterans before the Great Recession, the market has shifted to include higher-paid workers from all industries. While WIBs are funded by the federal government and the money given to each state, how the state decides to fund each county could not be determined; numbers were not available for how the state arrives at how much each county receives each year.
Lucarello said the buzz in Washington right now is how WIB programs will be affected by the 2011-12 federal budget.
“There is the push and pull between Democrats and Republicans. We”™ll have to see how it plays out. To date, for 2011, Dutchess spent 490K on outsourced training contracts; that does not include the various programs we offer in-house to help workers improve skills, learn to write resumes and other components necessary to become attractive in a highly competitive job market.”
As of May, Putnam has seen a 0.3 percent drop in unemployment, from 6.8 to 6.5 percent; Rockland and Westchester have seen their numbers drop as well, from 7.0 to 6.2 and 6.4, respectively. Ulster”™s jobless rate has decreased from 7.9 to 7 percent. Dutchess has seen its unemployment numbers drop from 7.7 to 7.4 percent. Only Orange has seen an increase in its unemployment rates, which were 7.5 in May 2010 and have risen to 8.0 percent in May 2011.
While those numbers, overall, show the number of jobless has declined, what is not figured into the equation is the number of people who have exhausted their unemployment benefits or who have given up looking for jobs, often moving in with relatives and applying for social services, including Medicaid, food stamps and the WIC (women, infants and children) program, as well as housing costs, which are picked up by the counties. Those numbers, not tracked, are in the “shadow,” and will remain there until more research is conducted to determine the true number of unemployed, which some sources say is closer to 20 percent than the 9 percent to 10 percent the U.S. government has projected.
