Posted on 06/24/2009 10:37:08 PM PDT by FromLori
Laid off from a construction job, Mr. Ryan finally found work last month playing the wolfman at Clark's Trading Post, a tourist attraction in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. For $12 an hour, about half what he made before, he dons furry rags, a coonskin cap and an eye patch and jumps out of the woods when the Trading Post's steam train chugs by, snarling and growling at passengers.
The high national jobless rate means that there is plenty of competition for even offbeat jobs, such as that of "Wolfman" at tourist attraction Clark's Trading Post. Jennifer Levitz reports. The job is nearly two hours north of his home in Pittsfield, N.H., too far to commute. So Mr. Ryan sleeps in an old, mold-ridden cottage with no running water that someone lets him use free. "These days, you have to do things you never thought you would," says the 52-year-old. "You have to go to extremes."
With the unemployment rate at 9.4%, some Americans are willing to go wherever they can to nab a job, even if it is temporary. To adapt, they find living quarters near the job in campers or cheap apartments, giving up normal family life for a paycheck, in a contemporary echo of the itinerants who roamed the country for work in the Great Depression.
Evidence of this labor trend is mostly anecdotal. In Linden, Tenn., where more than 300 people lost their jobs when an auto-parts plant closed in September, at least 20 now work three hours away in Paducah, Ky., manning tugboats on the Tennessee River, says John Carroll, the mayor of Perry County, Tenn. While there, they sleep on the tugboats. The unemployment rate in their home county is 22%.
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(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
This is ‘news’ because of the downturn.
I know of folks who leave their familys at ‘home’ while they work in Africa. Mid-east and the Old USSR (CIS) in the oil patch.
They work 6 and 2 or 28/28 and spilt the transit time with the company.
Others are on the road running combine teams, bridge builders, the list goes on.
I have yet to meet one willing to go back to the ‘old grind of 5 days/8 hour’ work.
Will Obama count this as one of those ‘shovel ready’ jobs that he promised?
By golly, that Obama is good.... there’s one.
Your posts are good. I have 2 questions:
a.) do you have a ping list?
b.) will you add me to it,if so?
Thank you.
I thought only illegals were willing to do those jobs? Many of these jobless people roaming the country could probably find work closer to home if we kicked the illegals out and let WILLING Americans take their jobs.
Could well be.
The chances of that actually happening today is rapidly approaching - nill.
adáptese o fallezca
Normalization is coming - like it or not.
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