Don’t tell the jobless things are improving

Standing on the inside of the unemployment picture looking out, Ken decides to share a secret.

"I told myself for years and years, 'I'll never end up homeless. I'll never end up starving,' " he says while waiting in line with thousands of other Southern Nevadans to enter the recent jobs fair at the Rio. "What I own now are my clothes and my shoes. I have no possessions, whatsoever. I went from making a good salary to now where I have nothing. I mean literally nothing."

He was once quite comfortable with his property maintenance job. He didn't live large by some Vegas standards, but he had security: his own place, a stocked refrigerator and plenty of the standard material trappings.

If someone had told him he would be unemployed for two years, the 44-year-old wouldn't have believed it. After all, unemployment was for people who didn't want to work, right?

Today, he knows he's not alone.

"A lot of these people in this room have lost everything," he says. "They're literally staying with friends, family members, renting rooms from people because they've lost their homes or apartments and all of their possessions. There are people here with loan obligations, court obligations, and they can't pay it."

His job search has touched four other states, and he's down to his last 15 resumes after printing 500.

If you want to know what he really thinks of the Southern Nevada employment scene, he'll tell you:

"On television they say, 'Oh, the job market, it's great.' They say it's getting better because the jobless rate went down or the filing for unemployment went down, or the claims went down. Well, the claims went down because their unemployment ran out. That is it. There's no other reason that 10,000 people didn't file a claim, it's because it ran out."

•••

Standing on the outside of the long line, Marty Brees cannot believe his eyes. He heard about the jobs fair, drove to the Rio parking lot with a plan to fill 10 positions for his Juice Bar concessions at the Las Vegas Athletic Clubs.

What he has found staggers him: the sight of many thousands of locals waiting for hours just for the chance to speak to someone about the possibility of work. He walks a stretch of the line, passes his business card to potential employees, and is stunned by the experience.

"This is insane. I can't even fathom this," the longtime Las Vegan says. "I pull in to park, and there's no parking. I had to park across the street at the Gold Coast and walk about a mile just to get over to this. It kind of breaks my heart, to tell you the truth. This doesn't even make sense to me. But it seems like everybody's got a good spirit. They're waiting in a mile-long line just to get in and see what there is available for them. Incredible.

"You see every age. I'm looking at guys here in their 60s to people in their teens. They're dressed in their business suits. They're giving it everything they've got. This is just amazing to me."

As he works the line, he explains the duties of the job, distributes some contact information, and feels a little like he's trying to drain an ocean with a teacup. After enjoying the many years of the Las Vegas boom, he's witnessing the other side.

"It's a step away from everybody," says Brees, his eyes moistening. "Everybody has to realize that this could happen to anybody and everybody. Nobody's really safe at this point. Nobody's safe. I wish I could employ everybody out here, I really do."

He can't, of course. No one person can. Southern Nevada didn't get double-digit unemployment overnight, and recovery probably will be excruciatingly slow.

In 2012 the question will remain: Is the local jobs picture improving?

That all depends on where you're standing.

John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Email him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 702-383-0295. He also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/smith.