Still looking: update on four long-term job seekers

The unemployed normally get 26 weeks of state benefits. An extra 13 weeks were tacked on by the federal government in March 2002, and twice more since then. But workers whose state unemployment ran out in December did not get an extension. Supporters in Congress plan to push for one again this month.

"The argument on the other side is that if you lengthen the [duration of] insurance, you lengthen the time people are out of work ... because they can afford to be picky about what kind of job they'll take," says Richard Vedder, a senior fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.

Nicholas Masi, who once earned a six-figure salary at a telecom company in New Jersey, knows plenty of colleagues who have long passed the point of being picky. One is now a janitor and tax-preparer; another, a limo driver.

Mr. Masi works part time for Asbury Park Press, delivering papers that were missed by the original carrier. His schedule leaves two business days free for his job search - something he's stepped up in recent months by hiring career coach Donna Coulson. She calls him to check in on his weekly goals - and his morale.

"A lot of people think that it's just a bad economy and when the tide comes back in they're going to get up and surf again," says Ms. Coulson, founder of Live Your Life, a staff development and training company in Red Bank, N.J. "The one key thing I try to get across to everybody is that you need to reinvent yourself."

Masi's paper delivery route sparked his curiosity about some companies in an industrial park. He found out how to look them up on databases at the library, and even if his follow-up letters don't yield a job, he says, "at least maybe they can refer me to someone else or let me do an informational interview."

What frustrates Masi is being told he's overqualified: "They're not realizing that our work ethic is such that we'd love to do that job, especially if we're solving problems, using our brains. There's a lot of good things that come out of work besides the paycheck."

Luis Vega found that to be true when he started working at Radio Shack last year, a place where he had been "hanging out" after losing his electrical-engineering job in the Boston area in the fall of 2002. "I felt good since I was keeping my body and mind busy, although my free time to look for work lessened, and the pay is about half of what I was getting on unemployment," he writes in an e-mail.

The other big change - one that seems small at first glance - is that he started carrying a cellphone. "I inherited this one after one of my daughters sent it through a cycle in the washing machine. Surprisingly (to me) every call I have gotten about a job or interview has been on this cellphone when I was away from the house."

How soon job seekers' phones will start ringing off the hook is the big question for 2004. Companies have found ways to do more with fewer workers, so they may be slow to hire.

But high productivity isn't always bad news for the employment picture, says Mr. Vedder of the Independent Institute, who is also an economics professor at Ohio University. "The one thing that looks extremely promising right now is the very sharp decline in the cost of hiring workers - taking into account the output workers are producing.... There's more profit potential in hiring. I would anticipate in the next six months a sharp growth."

So far, indicators suggest a mild rebound, according to Manpower Inc. Some 20 percent of the companies it surveyed expect to increase hiring in the first three months of 2004. Adjusting for seasonal factors, that amounts to a 3 percentage-point improvement in the jobs outlook from the past quarter.

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