What It Is Like to be Laid Off

UNEMPLOYMENT in the U.S. no longer means breadlines and deprivation, but the reality of joblessness still brings painful changes to the people who make up the statistics. If unemployment continues long enough, it can often lead to the loss of one's home or car, to the unpleasant need of relocating in another part of the country, or to personal discouragement. The effects on three typical families: THE MACHINIST. In Seattle, where widespread unemployment creates a here-today, gone-tomorrow mood, the current definition of an optimist is a Boeing worker who brings his lunch to the job. One man who can appreciate that grim joke is Vern Higgins, 44, a precision machinist at Boeing until last month, when he was laid off after eight years on the job. Higgins grossed $168 a week; now he collects exactly $168 once a month in state unemployment compensations. From that, Higgins pays $108 on the small suburban house in which he, his wife and their four children live. Utilities and medical coverage take up all the rest. Food and all other living expenses come out of savings, and soon there will be none left.

Higgins has been looking for work in Seattle and Tacoma. "Believe me," he says, "there's just nothing in the way of a job. Wherever you go, they won't even talk to you most of the time." At one company, he filled out an application but found that 50 to 75 men had already been there. The Higgins family hopes to keep its house, though Vern says: "I have heard about others with less equity in homes out here who have just walked away from them in the last 30 days." THE STEELWORKER. "When things started slowing down. I knew I'd get it," says Ray Russo, 29, a veteran of U.S. Steel's Irvin Works near Pittsburgh. Because of reduced demand for auto-bumpers steel, Russo was dropped down last month from coil feeder to laborer, and his take-home pay was cut from about $135 weekly to $85. Three weeks ago, he got a blue slip notifying him that he was "furloughed." He is among the lucky ones. Furloughed workers keep their identification badges and locker keys; they can be recalled without the red tape of physical examinations and other re-entry procedures that "laid off" workers must go through if they are rehired.

Russo's wife works as a bank teller. His unemployment compensation plus the United Steelworkers' jobless benefits will add up to as much as his take-home pay as a laborer. "I've been through this before," says Russo. "At first it's like a paid vacation, but then you have too much time on your hands, and you begin to worry." The most nagging worry: if Russo is off for six months, he will lose Blue Cross coverage. Money pinch or not, Ray Russo has no plans to look for work because that would wipe out unemployment benefits and supplemental compensation. THE SPACE SPECIALIST. Jose Jimenez (no kin to the Bill Dana comedy character) is a former Navy lieutenant commander who spent the past seven years at North American Rockwell's plant in Downey, Calif., as an Apollo command-module training officer. At 44, he has enough plaques, awards, citations and pins to wall up a suburban picture window. Last September he was let go as part of an 8% reduction of aerospace and systems employees because of federal budget cuts. "I didn't think it would happen to me," says Jimenez.

He was earning $1,200 a month and had saved about $5,000 despite supporting a wife and seven children. Three weeks after being laid off, he put down all of his savings, plus about $ 13,000 borrowed from his father, and opened a franchised Tastee Freez stand. "I am working my butt off," he says about his 16-hour days and seven-day weeks. Jimenez went into business for himself because he did not want to leave the Downey area. "I had four or five offers, but they were all outside the state." He has a mortgage, but can just meet the payments, and his family helps out by working at the stand. While at North American Rockwell, Jimenez had been studying food franchising for some time; he knows that some of his friends were not so farsighted.

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