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chipsanddespair · 7 years

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As the U.S. labor force crests again, a new complex of problems locks many Americans out of the workplace.

Even at so-called full employment, some 20 million Americans are left behind.

Theyre looking for work, out of the labor force but unhappy about it, or report working part-time when theyd prefer more hours, according to data released last week. Their plight comes even as the U.S. flirts with what economists consider the maximum level of employment for the first time since before the recession, having added 15.8 million jobs since the start of 2010. While some of Americas jobless are simply between gigs, those persistently stuck out of work are called the structurally unemployed.

President Donald Trump said wrongly last month that 96 million people are looking for work, having included Americans who are still in school, retired, or just uninterested. Yet his words resonated in a country where economic insecurity is distributed unequally and cruellyfar deeper in Mingo, W. Va., than in midtown Manhattan.

Because of where the structurally unemployed live, what theyve done, or the skills they lack, employers cant or wont hire them. The problems that keep today’s jobless stuck on the sidelines are different than those of past recoveries: a complex web of often interrelated issues from disability and drug use to criminal records.

Behind the statistics are people with 20 million unique stories. Here are five.

Fighting To Get Out of Mingo, W. Va.

Tyler Moores late-December drive to Louisville, Ky., was one of desperation. He was headed four hours west on Interstate 64 to interview for a job. Even if he landed the position, filling his gas tank had left him with $8 to his name. He would have to sleep at a friends place until he could earn enough to pay rent.

The 23-year-old had run out of options. Hed applied for dozens of jobs within an hour and a half of his hometown of Lovely, once a coal-mining stronghold. Instead of opportunities, he had found waiting lists.

Minimum-wage jobs, fast-food restaurants, Wal-Mart, anything like that, a lot of them has already been took, he says in an Appalachian drawl, explaining that the backlog just to interview was as long as a year. There are no jobs.

Moores story paints an extreme picture of how an economic environment can create a vicious circle of joblessness. While he is an imperfect job candidate, his flaws were molded by his upbringing in Martin County, Ky. and neighboring Mingo County, W. Va.

Moore takes advice from Therese Carew, a nun and counselor

His problems started in earnest in 2014. He had been living on his own for several years, having moved out at 18 after dropping out of high school, obtaining his GED, and going to work in security at a coal company. Moore is gay in an intensely conservative region, and he said he left school because of bullying.

Moore lost his job in late 2013 after smoking marijuana and failing a drug test. Though he found temporary work as a remote customer service representative, he lost that one when his mother died of a drug overdose in 2014 and he had to plan her funeral.

Deeply depressed and unemployed, he moved into an old Airstream camper propped on cinder blocks behind his fathers house, at the entrance to the litter-strewn trailer park that the older man owns in the misty hills of Lovely. There, surrounded by long-unemployed neighbors and rampant drug use, Moore began to abuse his medical prescriptions. I guess I used it as my crutch, in a way, he says.

Moore began getting in fights while drugged and was arrested twice. When he landed in jail for several months, he realized things needed to change. He graduated from a rehabilitation program in September, one year, one month, and 15 days after that last altercation. Since then, hes deepened his friendship with Sister Therese Carew, a Catholic nun who ministers to the region, and dedicated his time to job seeking.

Opportunities are few. Coal mines have been closing, and theyve taken most other businesses with them.

To employers outside the area, the fact that Moore is neatly groomed, soft-spoken, and polite cant mask his history. Whats more, hes the first to admit that the math skills he learned in the local public schoolswhere only eight in 10 students graduatearent up to par, and his speaking patterns are colored by regional grammar.

His situation is difficult, but Moore has found a reason to hope.

Coal work, once a mainstay, has become scarce in Appalachia

He didnt get the job for which he made that 240-mile (386-kilometer) drive, but he dropped in to his old rehab center on the way home. When he explained his predicament, the director of operations told him that he could come back until he gets on his feet. The group has found a job for him in plastics manufacturing that could turn full-time after a 30-day probation period. The position is enabling him to pay $100 a week in rent. Its a chance to build an employment record as he fights to have his record expunged.

Still, moving out requires a tough tradeoff: Moore would have preferred to stay close to home, because his family is still in Kentucky and his father is in his seventies. And the job probably isnt a pathway to wealth and ease. But what Moore wants most is mere self-sufficiency.

A simple lifestyle, but being able to have work: I aint got to have nothing exquisite, he says.

David Wolf wears his journey through drugs and crime on his arm.

Branded as Untouchable by a Felony Rap

These days, David Wolf doesnt allow himself to get excited by the news of a job offer. Most get rescinded within days. Its happened at least a hundred times, he said.

In 2012, Wolf was convicted of faking a name and Social Security number to get prescription painkillers. Now the 40-year-old father of three and former Marine, who has an associates degree from St. Petersburg College, has struggled to find employment. He’s received so many retracted offers that hes lost count.

I get more interviews that I can shake my stick at, but again, it always comes back around to the denominator of being a felon, Wolf says from his small, one-level ranch house in a Tampa, Fla., suburb, where religious imagery and family photos decorate his walls. For many, many years, I pretty much got whatever job I wanted. I was able to do anything I felt like doing. Its really been a humbling experience

Wolf researches employment options at a career center in New Port Richey, Fla

Wolf, whose chaotic life before he got clean included several domestic battery and drug-related charges, is one of the more than a half-million people who are released from U.S. federal and state prison every year. The influx occurs as the nation comes out of a decades-long war on illegal drugs. Implementation of stricter laws and tougher enforcement that led to a mushrooming of incarcerations and a booming ex-offender population. Before his identity theft conviction five years ago, Wolf held several jobs in sales and marketing, managed a call center, and served as a recruiter for the U.S. Marines. Since, he and his family have since lived off food stamps and cash assistance.

They wouldnt even hire me to sell Christmas trees at a Home Depot through an employment agency, he says. A lot of times the hiring managers feel like they have their hands tied, due to company policy. Its something that really needs to change. Not only can I not get a job, but I cant get a job with a living wage for my family. I have three children. I have a wife. Im not a bad guy.

Wolf shares his home with his second wife, his toddler, and a cat he gently picks up every time it scurries into the living room. Nearly half of U.S. children now have at least one parent with a criminal record.

A Corinthians verse, Love is patient, love is kind, love never fails, decorates a sofa cushion. Outside his living room window, children gather by a school bus stop as the morning fog lifts in the modest neighborhood of Holiday, Fla.

Less than a 10-minute drive away, he spends his free time volunteering at a Mormon church, where he also gets career training. A workshop book, The Lord Would Want You to Be Successful, rests on his living-rooms desk. Men with criminal records now account for about 34 percent of nonworking men aged from 25 and 54 years old, otherwise known as prime working age.

Family photographs on the piano at Wolfs home in Holiday, Fla.

Myself and many other felons, and were facing demons, downtime isnt a good thing, he says. Almost half of released inmates are arrested again within eight years, either for new offenses or for violating the conditions of their release. Were getting food stamps and cash assistance. We dont like being on it. But the society that looks down on those receiving assistance is the same society that wont hire me, and the same society that judges criminals when they reoffend.

He had the word forgiven inked on his forearm after a stint in rehab. On the worst days of his addiction, which started following a car crash more than a decade ago, Wolf remembers taking as many as 40 pills in one day. OxyContin, Percocet, and Vicodin were his usual ones.

It affected me, seeing guys that have sentences of 20, 30 years. This is a vicious, vicious circle, and were not going anywhere.

Leroy Moore, one of almost 9 million Americans who receive disability insurance, spends nearly half of his monthly check on his apartment.

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