For three years she is unemployed, Sheila Magsby short job center job center in the wheel of his battered car in the hope of becoming thinner, to find a job. The point where it is, after thirty-six months of fruitless searches and applications without response, the forties would be satisfied with a minimum wage, although it has twenty years experience as secretary to the prosecutor in Los Angeles. Over the past year, Sheila no longer receives any unemployment benefits. It is therefore no income. "Luckily I live with my father. How else am I get out? "She asks.
Sheila lives in Los Angeles, but that it is today came Torrance consult the job offers. "I might have better luck here," she sighed half-heartedly.At about twenty miles west of downtown, Torrance is home to the headquarters of U.S. automakers Toyota and Honda, companies that only hire certainly not now, but around which created an economy of small merchants , restaurants, etc..
Degreasing the chain
Eighth global economy, California stands today especially the second worst unemployment rate in the country (12.1%) after the Nevada (13.4%). Only the San Francisco area, the heart of high-tech industries and the Internet is more or less spared thanks to companies like Twitter and Facebook continue to recruit qualified personnel. The rest of the state bogged down. Building on education, the downsizing continues as roads and school performance deteriorated.In the center, in the San Joaquin Valley, the unemployment rate reached 40% in some towns. To the south, near the Mexican border, it rises to 26% in the Greater El Centro.
Alarmed by stagnant growth, stock market rout and a nagging housing crisis, employers in California have eliminated 8,400 jobs in August (after having created 98,500 since the beginning of the year). 3600 of them were eliminated in the public sector. The teacher Cindy Cheritan is one of the many victims of these cuts. She found herself obliged to accept a job as a nurse throughout the summer, paid $ 50 per day, because the City of Downey, where she works, can no longer afford to offer the remedial courses that summer allow teachers to make ends meet during their two months of unpaid leave."I've mostly replacements, says Cindy, because it is currently impossible to get tenure."
Three hundred applicants for every job
Cindy's case is emblematic. She returned several times the path to college for a career change. Having obtained a real estate license at the beginning of the real estate crisis of 1997, she was forced to abandon this activity almost immediately. "At the time, there was a shortage of teachers. So I opted for this profession. "Struck by bad luck, she became a teacher at age 45, after five years of study, just when education authorities began to fire teachers. Cindy is now for the group 16.3% of Californians living below the poverty line.At 50, she returned also live with her parents.
"We see a lot of engineers, says Christina Haggins, the job center of Redondo Beach as the aerospace industry, a strong presence here, has eliminated thousands of jobs. Recently we even had a judge have been unemployed for several months. We tried to help him, but he still has not found anything. "
According to the California Labor Department, about 300 candidates apply for each job. As was recently the case in a holistic care center for pets. "They were looking for a receptionist. We were 250 to introduce ourselves, "said Julie, unemployed for two years.
California and have any interest in adopting the employment plan recently presented by Barack Obama.The $ 3.9 billion allocated to infrastructure renewal of the state could create 51,500 jobs, 37,000 teachers could find the way to school. Finally, about 710,000 SMEs would receive tax cuts and social security. "We absolutely must get out of the economic hole we have fallen," calls the director of the Institute for Research and Development of the use of UCLA, Chris Tilly. "People need to get back on their spending and businesses to hire."