Jobless resort to online posts to find work
— -- "Hungry" is the headline on a Craigslist post from Phoenix. In Boise, Idaho: "I NEED WORK!!!" In Chicago: "Laid off vet needs to pay rent." In Little Rock: "Please help us!!!" In Richmond, Va.: "Need a miracle." In Oklahoma City: "Broke girl needs help fast."
Craigslist, a network of online communities that offers free classified advertisements, is a portal into the misery of people who are struggling to find jobs. Posts from people who are desperate for work read like Haiku poems that detail hard times and fear.
Some people post sad tales that might or might not be true, and ask for cash donations or loans. Most, though, offer to do almost anything legal for pay. Need Ikea furniture assembled? The going rate is $20-$40. Need your garage organized? That will set you back as little as $10 an hour. Jobless people offer rides across town or to the airport. They'll tend to aging parents, repair cars or replace kitchen faucets.
Alley Foster was thinking about his 7-month-old daughter when he sat at his computer to write a post on Craigslist.
"New father (looking for any work)," he wrote. "Call me anytime for a job."
Foster, 29, who lives in Missoula, Mont., was homeless until two years ago. The only full-time job he had ever had was at a Wendy's restaurant. Now that he has quit drinking, he's determined to build a life for his little girl, Araya, and marry her mother. He really needs a job.
"I've been trying to find a maintenance position, but there isn't the money in the local economy for that," he says. "Nobody hires unless they have to, and when they do hire they pay so little that it doesn't help anybody."
So he turned to Craigslist, where he offered to repair roofs, do electrical or plumbing work, upholstery, construction, moving, remodeling, lawn care. The post has landed him a few jobs, he says. To get through the winter, he plans to offer his services for snow removal and putting up Christmas lights.
"People like me, we're prepared for the worst," he says, recalling his homeless days. "I can live off $3 a day, but I'm concerned for my daughter. I don't want her to have to go through stuff like that."
Gary Burtless, a labor economist at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, says people who have been living on the margins are up against more than the nation's 9.1% unemployment rate. "The people who have been unemployed the longest and the people who have the least amount of schooling are the ones who are going to recover last," he says.
It will take a robust recovery — which Burtless doesn't think is imminent — for employers to "hire anybody, including people who have been out of work for three years," he says.
Until then, Craigslist and other online resources offer at least some hope for short-term work for modest pay to the unemployed.
Chicago: 'Need some extra help?'
When Anna Briskman left her job as an events planner at the Field Museum in April, she figured it would take two or three months at the most to find a new position. She's still looking, and her Craigslist post says she's willing to help with errands, shop for groceries, or "clean out the garage or kitchen with you."
Briskman, 31, has a degree in hospitality administration and experience working at hotels and on cruise ships. She networks, volunteers and posts her résumé on career sites.
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