Karen Doche, left, laid off from her job two years ago, takes a math class at Re:Start Chattanooga adult education as she works toward her GED.Karen Doche knows what she’s up against.
People with bachelor’s degrees are out there looking for jobs, people with master’s and doctorates, too. Vice presidents who used to wear dry-cleaned suits are looking for jobs. There are men, maybe bigger or quicker or younger than her.
Still, she puts in the applications, works to find the work, and tells herself it isn’t her fault she’s one of millions still unemployed in this country because factories folded or shareholders pressed to shed costs even if that meant shedding people.
Two years ago Doche was laid off from the textile mill where she had worked for 23 years. Hundreds of others got pink slips over the next few months, too. A few of them have found work recently, and she holds on to this news.
Holds on as tight as she can, when the phone doesn’t ring, when people give her strange looks at the bank where she cashes her $230-per-week unemployment check.