In Massachusetts, the economy is growing and some companies are reaping record profits. But not all is going well. Look at your paycheck. Wages today are like disco and leisure suits in the '70s; they're frozen in time.
And if you don't have a job, you just feel frozen out. That's the case for about 65,000 people in Massachusetts, out of work for a year or more.
The long-term jobless represent all walks of life, including those who seem to have given up on life itself, like this drunk man, standing outside a jobs center in Taunton.
"Are they doing anything to help you?" I asked him.
"No they’re not," he replied. "All I know is that I’m looking for a job every God-damn day and I’m not getting one."
Then there are people like Reggie Jenkins a man in his 30’s walking along a heavily trafficked boulevard in Taunton, which has one of the state’s highest unemployment rates.
"Just came from work," he said. "Since I been out here it’s been about 17 years I’ve had maybe two or three years that I worked temporary agencies from 15 years of living out here. So I been working about two or three years from 15 years of living here. And I do whatever they want me to do; anything to bake the bread man."
And for William DiCarlo of Hyde Park, he never imagined he’d be in the same world as the others.
"I worked at the Red Cross since 1993 and I got laid off Oct 28, 2011, and they had small call centers throughout the United States and they decided to centralize them," DiCarlo said. "And in my case the East Coast was moved to Charlotte, North Carolina."
Relocation was not an option:
"No, they didn’t offer anybody a chance to relocate, no," he said.
DiCarlo received a severance. But it wasn’t enough to pay bills. So DiCarlo a man who believes that government should be shrunk, so much so he voted for Ronald Reagan and Mitt Romney turned to the government for help: He applied and received unemployment compensation.
"I think it comes out to like 50 percent of what you were making," he said. "So in my case, with the severance, it brought it a little under what I was making at the Red Cross. So that wasn't, at the time, a big difference. But in the case where your severence stopped, half your salary is gone."
DiCarlo said the only factor preventing he and his wife from losing their home is the tiny government check he receives, which run out any day now.
"Actually it did run out, and they extended me another 20 weeks," he said.
And how does he reconcile the check he receives in the form of unemployment compensation with his belief in small government? He said it’s a matter of priorities.
"You want to shrink government, but you don’t want to shrink government that’s going to put lower income people out of their houses and things like that," he said. "There’s plenty of waste in government."
DiCarlo the grandson of Italian immigrants and his wife have lived in Hyde Park for over 30 years. He lived by the middle class ideal: the notion that if you work hard, you can get ahead. Now he says he has seen that ideal fall apart for him and his co-workers.
"I thought I was the only one who felt this way," he said. "You know, when you see your mailman coming what bills you’re gonna pay? So you get your mortgage. You get utilities. You get your telephone bill. And then you go, ‘Which one am I going to pay?’ And if you skip your mortgage, then you can pay all your other bills. But if you pay your other bills, then you shouldn't pay your mortgage. It’s a real difficult situation."
DiCarlo, 60, has been without a steady job going on two years, and here’s the category of “long term unemployed” that he falls in.
"I really believe there’s an age discrimination," he said. "When you apply for a job before you would always hear back. Now, it’s just like you send an email, you send your resume, they know your age and there’s people with higher educations than we have."
Andrew Sum, director of Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, says experiences like this one leads many to drop out of the workforce altogether.
"That’s particularly true for older people who’ve lost their jobs, because there's a tendency for them to leave the labor force, and for very young people, who, when they’ve looked for a job for awhile and they can’t find it they tend to stop looking," Sum said.
But DiCarlo hasn’t given up.
"I am looking for any kind of job," he said. "I’ve done everything in my life. And I’m not afraid. I worked in a gas station. You name it I’ve done it. I’m not afraid to work."
When DiCarlo is not on his computer searching for jobs, he is commiserating with friends in Hyde Park or watching cable news shows.
"I watch Fox News and CNN," he said.
And on this day on CNN, a libertarian pundit is explaining why Congress should not extend unemployment benefits to the long-term jobless.
"If you go to unemployment itself you’ll see all the people taking classes," DiCarlo said. "You see all the people who are searching for jobs. And the jobs just aren’t there. I’m sure that guy got paid for what he’s talking about on CNN talking. Tell him to go out and find a job to see how easy it is."
"What if there's 27 people, or 2,700 people in line for one job?" asked John Drew, executive director of the anti-poverty organization Action for Boston Community Development, or ABCD. "Are we supposed to allow families, during this period, of time to have no income?"
"It's difficult, once you're on unemployment, because you're not getting the jobs, and you know there's an end to it," Drew said. "You really get to the point where you wonder, 'How the heck can I get out of this trap?' So, the idea that people on unemployment stay on unemployment just because they're lazy, can't find a job, flies in the face of the fact that there's no jobs."
But many economists argue that there are jobs out there, but the requisite skills are often missing, and many businesses are amassing profits and increasing production by asking more of the existing workforce rather than bringing on new hires. These realities wear on DiCarlo’s sense of stability.
"If you look at our financials, we have nothing in the bank," DiCarlo said. "Nothing."
With his retirement funds depleted, severance long gone and unemployment benefits nearly exhausted, it’s another day of searching.
"I’m always on my computer looking for jobs," he said.
And he’s found one:
"I sent a reply right away and got a call," he said. "And she says, 'Can you come down to see me.' And I went down to see her and she said, 'Can you start tomorrow,' and I did."
He’s working as a crossing guard at the Westinghouse Charter School in Readville. It doesn’t pay much and is fewer than 20 hours a week.
"It must feel a lot different from your last job," I asked him.
"Oh, big difference," DiCarlo said.
"How does it make you feel?" I asked.
"It makes me feel good," he said, laughing. "It gives me a place to come. I enjoy being utilized by doing something. I enjoy that."
But even with this part time job, DiCarlo says he still needs employment benefits. He needs another extension. His wife works full-time and sells home-grown honey to neighbors to make ends meet.
William DiCarlo, a proud conservative who relies on fast dwindling government benefits and a part-time job, said he never thought he would be stereotyped as a taker in society: someone not willing to work.
The crossing guard shakes his head at the irony.
