Feeds21st Century Unemployment Watering Holes
National chains and local coffee shops have become the Michigan (doesn’t) work gathering places for the new and long-term unemployed.
Take a look around your local Starbucks, Tuscan Cafe, Panera Bread, Biggby, Tim Horton’s, McDonalds, and Caribou Coffee and you will see the faces of Michigan’s unemployment statistics. The numbers are measured by real people, fathers, mothers, grandma and grandpa out of work.
It does not matter if you are in an affluent suburb or an intercity coffee shop — they have become the 21st century watering hole for the unemployed and underemployed.
With the nations highest unemployment rate that is officially set at near 15% (but is much higher if you include those that have been unemployed for a period of time and have fallen off the statistics our government keeps on the pain and misery) these unemployment watering holes are attracting many of the historically unemployed. Yet, also warming their hands with a cup of black coffee, like the vision of the down and out of the Great Depression around an oil barrel fire, are the new statistics that this decade’s long economic decline have snagged — the college educated 40-50 year old, recent college grads and those who never stood in an unemployment line.
No, they are not soot covered, disheveled or unshaven. Most are in professional attire be it white or blue collar. Their tools are their laptops and notebooks tapping into the free Wifi seeking new job leads, sending out resumes and typing out thank you letters after receiving another “thanks, but no thanks” letter of rejection.
“Coffee houses are the retreat to escape the isolation of sitting at home when the unemployment and sub-pay checks stop coming and the family and friend networking make you feel as welcome as a Jehovah’s Witnesses making a third stop at your house in one evening,“ explains Fred at a Plymouth Caribou Coffee. “Look around,” he continues, “it is the middle of the day and this place is packed with 50-year-old men and twenty-somethings busy tapping on their computer keys desperately seeking work.”
Fred motions for Susan to join us and she sheepishly, with a matter of fact tone, explains she lost her high paying logistics job with an auto supplier two years ago and has yet to find meaningful work.
“Sure, I have worked at temporary, low paying jobs without benefits to try to survive, but I am college educated, I have skills,” she continues and her voice falls off. “I am losing my savings along with hope.”
Since my encounter with Fred and Susan I have made it a point to pay attention to people in coffee shops as I travel the state. No, these unemployed are not as visible as the person at the freeway entrance and exit ramps with signs reading, “will work for food,“ “hungry, please help” or the day laborers congregating in city centers. But many are becoming desperate and are hurting just the same.
I suspect it was the same type of people who vented their anger and frustration in electing the first Republican to the U.S. Senate in the bluest of blue Democratic states, Massachusetts.
Opportunity To Help
People with needs are all around us. No, Michigan is not Haiti, where the pain and need is great and literally in our face on the nightly national news, where roughly half of the country’s 10 million citizens live on the edge, without work, perched precariously on hillsides. Yet, Michigan and its 10 million citizens, where nearly a quarter million people lost jobs last year and close to a million over the last decade, are perched precariously, yet, less visibly along economic fault lines as well.
While there has been some economic good news of late, UoM economists predict continued job losses in 2010. Michigan loses jobs and employers in roaring tsunami’s and replace them in teardrops.
It can be argued that much of Michigan’s economic troubles have their origins at the international and national level or failed state policies over which a few have control. Here are a few things that could be done to help:
- The state should post job information from Michigan Works and the Talent Bank at all coffee shops across the state including education and training programs through the “No Worker Left Behind” program
- In collaboration with the private coffee shops, install computer terminals/kiosks linked to job and training opportunities to be available to those without computer access.
- If you are an employer, stop by any coffee shop and post or announce your employment opportunities. People like Fred and Susan would be most appreciative.
If you are a politician seeking votes, stop by any local coffee shop, there are many voters there that will give you an earful.
Tom Watkins has served the citizens of Michigan as state superintendent of schools, 2001-2005 and state mental health director, 1986-1990.
