Blake Sims, 27

Sims worked as a technician at a 50 year old off-set lithography company in Austin, Texas. He was employed there for 7 months before getting laid off in December. At that time, he was the only employee whose position was cut.

"Everybody else I worked with is married with kids, so here's me, a single dude...really anybody else at my job would have been in a much rougher spot if they'd been let go," says Sims.

He explains that his boss was so distraught over having to cut his position that Sims was consoling him as it happened.

"My boss was actually in tears when he told me, so here I am patting him on the back saying 'Hey man, it's all right,' while I'm losing my job".

After five weeks of searching, Sims managed to find a new job at a sign making business. But instead of using the de-facto job-hunting tool of his generation, the internet, Sims took a more old-fashioned approach.

"I just walked in off the street," he says.

Lee County, Florida

Lee County lies on the Gulf coast of Florida, about half way between Tampa and Miami. It saw a development boom a few years ago, but last year Cape Coral, a primarily residential area laced with canals, led the nation in home foreclosures. More than three quarters of the homes sold in Lee County as a whole last year were in foreclosure or close to it. Though the county attracted urban planners, construction workers, and home-buyers five years ago, it now has the highest unemployment rate in the state of Florida.


John Hawkins is a 55 year-old heavy equipment operator. He moved his family from Long Island down to Cape Coral four years ago to work in construction, clearing and grading land for housing developments. He worked for the same company all four years until this past Thanksgiving when he was laid off. He is pictured here at one of the sites he worked on, where many homes remain unfinished or vacant.


John and his wife have three children, and while she works part-time, their financial situation is growing dire. He describes job hunting:

"I go to the career center here in Fort Myers, which is a frustrating experience in and of itself. You stand there at 6:30 in the morning and there's a line in front of you of 30 or 40 people. The doors don't open until 8. I spend the whole day there because I'm not fluent with computers, I have to seek help. I fill out applications for jobs all day, some of which I'm qualified for, some of which I'm not. Then I go home, only to not get any replies,".


One of their sons has moved back to Long Island to find work, and their 16 year-old daughter has taken a part-time job at a movie theater. John himself is studying to qualify for new classes of licenses. He is pictured above with the handbook he is using to gain a license to drive a bus.

"What I'm trying to do is invest in myself while I have this time," he says of the effort to give himself more of an edge on the job market. But he believes his family's future in Florida is uncertain.

"I've even begun applying to trucking jobs out of state, but I want to wait until my daughter graduates in June. It's up in the air where we go from there...if it doesn't get better, who knows? If I don't get a job in the next two months, we're not going to be able to make rent".



In 2002 Amy brought her family to Fort Myers, a city just east of Cape Coral. They came because Amy was an urban planner and Lee County was one of the fastest growing counties in the country at the time.


They soon realized Florida's climate wasn't good for a respiratory condition Amy has and planned to move to North Carolina. In 2006 she left her job in preparation for the move and to care for their new daughter Evelyn. The couple soon found they were unable to sell their house for what they'd paid for it. Additionally, they owned eight other properties in the county, all of which had depreciated greatly. Before they knew it, the family was facing foreclosure and had to declare bankruptcy.

Amy's husband Rick is a car salesman and now works 10 hour days, seven days a week, to make ends meet. They've moved into a rental home, but don't know how long they will stay there. They are being enticed to stay in Florida because of the incentives offered through the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, a part of Obama's stimulus package.

"I believe in the NSP program because there's a lot of people here, myself included, who are in the construction industry that don't want to have to take unemployment, they want to work. But there's no work, so what do you do in that situation? You create work," says Amy.

The program allows local governments to redevelop foreclosed properties, and offer them to low to middle income families at reduced rates. The hope is that it will create jobs again in the construction field and help families get homes they can afford. It has already spurred an upswing in home purchases in the area in the last four months.

While Amy realizes staying in Florida is not good for her health, she feels they have the best opportunity here now.

"I've got to do what's best for my family. Where else can we go where my husband can make $60,000 a year and we're going to get a mortgage?"

Christopher Moulder, 42

Christopher Moulder runs his own industrial design studio in Atlanta, GA. With the help of a small staff, he creates inventive, sculptural lighting solutions that are equal parts form and function.

Projects lay scattered around his cavernous warehouse studio, and two of his assistants buzz away on them with precision power tools. Classical music blasts over the stereo and nearly drowns them out.

The studio is busy. Moulder says business is going great, and he has a theory as to why: many of his competitors have recently failed. He cites a handful of other local design firms in town that have closed in the past few years, including one that used to be run by one of his employees.

"In the last three or four months, I've been getting inquiries and orders... it's enough that I have to start re-assembling my team".

His team needed re-assembling after the abrupt cancellation of a big job for condo developer WCI Communities in the fall of 2007. The real estate developer had hired Moulder to design lighting for a large hotel in Miami, but backed out mid-way through. It soon became known the company was in trouble financially, and they eventually filed for bankruptcy the following year.

The WCI project was so big it had consumed all of the activities of Moulder's company. When it ended, they had no other jobs in progress. He considers himself lucky it ended when it did, because it forced him to scale back his operation months before the economic crisis really struck.

"If it had ended a year later, business would have been at a dead stop at a bad time. This past year I've been relaying the groundwork just enough to where [the current jobs] can tide me over".

Moulder is pictured holding a crystal left over from the ill-fated WCI project.

Jessica Williams, 23

Jessica Williams was a Volunteer Activity Coordinator for Florence Crittenton in South Carolina for three months.

"I didn't realize that they were already under financial struggles [when I started in August], but it became much more apparent by October when they called me in one day and said 'Hey, you have two more days'", says Jessica about her brief experience there.

Jessica had just graduated college the previous spring and was very proud to have landed a full-time job with benefits through the organization which helps pregnant teenagers prepare for motherhood. She attempted to find more work in South Carolina, but had no luck. Instead of giving up, Jessica has decided to look at her lay-off as an opportunity.

"Originally, before all this happened, I was supposed to be famous," she says with a smile. " I actually went to school for theater, but I told my friends I would never be a starving artist. But now that I'm starving, I may as well go get the second part too".

And so Jessica packed up and moved to Atlanta to pursue acting. She has been staying with a friend there now for three weeks and has already found some part-time work at an after school program. It's not much of an income, but it is something and allows her the time she needs to find her way into Atlanta's acting world.

Jessica is also a devout Christian and has found opportunities to share and develop her faith. She practices Praise Dancing, which is a form of worship gaining popularity in Christian churches across America. Since losing her job she has been involved in about a dozen performances and is being asked to teach classes at churches in South Carolina and Georgia. She views the dancing as a part of her career as a performer, and will even be going on the road to dance in a touring production.

"I've always been one to 'go get it'. This is a situation where it's been much more of a struggle to [do that]. For a moment I was really down, and wondered if I should just give up and quit. But... I can't afford to do that. Life is too short and I refuse to. I will make it. It's just a matter of when and how, because this place is complicated".

Chanda Williams, 27

Chanda Williams was an office manager and event coordinator at an Atlanta restaurant. In October, after struggling through a slow-down in business, the restaurant was bought by a larger company and her position was eliminated. She has been out of work since.

Williams lives in East Atlanta with her husband, a maintenance worker at Emory University, and their 3 year old son Che. Their home is cozy and scattered with toys, and looks out over a partially wooded backyard that this morning is blanketed in snow. The house is owned by Chanda's mother, a fact Chanda considers a blessing that allows them to continue to stay afloat.

"I have a bachelor's degree and I can't even get secretarial work," says Chanda. "My fall-back has always been waiting tables, but I have a friend who is a manager at a restaurant, and he told me they put an ad on Craigslist for servers. They got 200 responses in the first day and half of [the applicants] had masters degrees".

Since Chanda is home most of the time now and they've lost her income, the Williams have taken Che out of daycare. Coincidentally, two of her friends with children also lost their jobs recently, and the three have teamed up to create their own daycare network.

"It forced us to build a community," says Chanda.

The three mothers each take turns watching the kids, giving the other two time to job hunt and run errands. The solution was a welcome change for Chanda after a period of being home with her son seven days a week.

"I didn't realize that working part-time was keeping me sane, because it was a break and it was making me a better mother. If I have the day away from him, then the time we have together is so much better".

Old Fort, North Carolina

Last week Ethan Allen announced they'd be laying off about 70 people from their furniture manufacturing plant in Old Fort, NC. In addition, they are closing and re-opening the plant at two week intervals for the immediate future. This news is just the latest in a wave of furniture manufacturing layoffs and factory closings in western North Carolina. Old Fort's mayor Garland Norton worries about the effect it will have on their small town.


"When you cut 1,000 jobs, 2,000 people are effected," says Norton. To illustrate the ripple effect, he cited JLJ Trucking Company. They were a local business that employed around 200 people until they closed due to a lack of business. Norton's own store, Family Pharmacy has also felt the impact. Sales are down on a whole and people are tending to buy more non-prescription and off-brand products.


Old Fort currently has a population of around 900 people. Norton estimates about 85% of the Ethan Allen plant's remaining workforce are Old Fort area residents. He grows visibly worried at the thought of the plant closing entirely.


Signs like these are dotted along Highway 70, which passes through the town.

Erin Sarkees, 29

Was a Marketing Analyst for Circuit City until the company filed for bankruptcy protection last November. They went bankrupt in January.

Sarkees had only been with the electronics retailer for four months when she was laid off. She quickly found a position at a Lane Bryant retail store in Richmond, VA but lost her job there as well when it closed in January. Only a week later, she found yet another position at a company called Mortgage Outreach Services. According to its' website, MOS "is a company dedicated to helping borrowers experiencing difficulties with their mortgage. MOS will act as a liaison between you and your mortgage company in finding a possible solution to your problem".

Sarkees says she has to share a desk at her new job because the company is hiring so fast that it has grown too big for its' office space. "This company just happens to be doing so well because the economy is so bad," says Sarkees. "Normally they would be basically a collection agency. If you defaulted on your mortgage they'd be calling you. But now because the tables have turned, they're in the position to help people try to save their houses... It actually feels good because you're making some sort of difference".

She says that many of MOS's customers now are homeowners who are up to date with their mortgage payments, but know that they'll be falling behind in a few months, often due to a job loss. The help they are seeking is preventative.

Sarkees is incredibly grateful to have found work in this economy, but she does have a lingering worry in the back of her mind. "I'm wondering if the lifespan of my job will only be two years. At this point, it's preventing me from buying a house just in case I don't have a job when the economy recovers".