The Sun City tells 34,000 stories of unemployment

More
The Texas Workforce Solutions Upper Rio Grande office provides access to WorkInTexas.com, the most comprehensive online resource but not enough to satisfy the demand of 34,000 El Pasoans. (Christian Guerrero/Borderzine.com)

The Texas Workforce Solutions Upper Rio Grande office provides access to WorkInTexas.com, the most comprehensive online resource but not enough to satisfy the demand of 34,000 El Pasoans. (Christian Guerrero/Borderzine.com)

The Texas Workforce Solutions Upper Rio Grande office provides access to WorkInTexas.com, the most comprehensive online resource but not enough to satisfy the demand of 34,000 El Pasoans. (Christian Guerrero/Borderzine.com)

The Texas Workforce Solutions Upper Rio Grande office provides access to WorkInTexas.com, the most comprehensive online resource but not enough to satisfy the demand of 34,000 El Pasoans. (Christian Guerrero/Borderzine.com)

EL PASO – Waking up restless after a night of insomnia is the everyday scenario of a 62-year-old electrician who after being laid off three months ago has gone homeless, living in his only possession, an old, rusty green pick-up truck.

Unemployment has scared this Chicago native, who asked to remain anonymous, because he says the U.S. social security system has thrown him down a trash hole.

“I have been facing a very difficult time,” he said. “I have only been collecting unemployment and that’s what has been taking me through and I’m still living on the streets.”

His appearance doesn’t disguise his current economic crisis. His threadbare shirt and jeans and noticeably long white hair speak of the difficult times he’s going through.

This glimpse of what unemployment does is only one of 34,000 stories of unemployment in El Paso.

Back in 2009, Obama was urged to sign the Recovery Act as a response to the economic crisis. This Act had three goals – to create jobs, spur economic activity and foster unprecedented levels of accountability.

The Act provided $288 billion in tax cuts and an increase of $224 billion in federal funds for unemployment compensation.

Unfortunately according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, by October of this year unemployment rate had reached 10.6 per cent in El Paso, compared to 9.1 per cent nationally and 8.5 per cent in Texas.

The electrician believes he is the victim of discrimination and prejudice, and according to him that’s just the way it is in this country. “I want to state the facts, and if someone doesn’t like them they need to be laid off the Santa Claus books,” he said.

Sadly this man has become a statistic like many El Paso residents who are going through a similar crisis. Early on a Wednesday morning, many residents here arrived at the Texas Workforce Building on the corner of Rojas and Lomaland only to find it closed due to remodeling.

A man in his early 40’s who also asked to remain anonymous and, said it was not fair that the building was closed without letting the unemployed know beforehand. He complained that the U.S. crisis starts with the price of gasoline and he was driving a motorcycle to use less.

A father of two, he has been looking for a job to sustain his wife and two children for the past four months. “From what I see, the only ones benefiting from this are the fueling companies.  The gas hasn’t come down,” said the motorcycle driver.

After the recession hit the country, he said he lost a semi-truck family business and was left with an insurance agency that is in trouble and he needs a second job to inject money into the business.

He said that job fairs offer only a minimum of help – food chain jobs at minimum wage with small paychecks that go directly to the gasoline companies. It would make sense to him, he said, if the minimum wage went up or if the oil companies lowered prices for costumers.

“Let’s all wake up and see what’s going on here, everywhere you look people have to get around in their vehicles, so we don’t have other options. We are still feeding the monster,” he said.

Leave a Reply