Job Club – Because You Only Need One Job

Between networking, researching companies and spending hours searching and applying for jobs online, joblessness is a full-time job. And in that sense, those at the Lisle Township Job Club are fully employed.

Its weekly networking meetings, held in the Community Career Center in Naperville, offer a window into the stubborn scourge of unemployment. I’ve come here several times over the last few years to look through it.

The presence of so many experienced, articulate yet jobless businesspeople — the center gets about 55 new clients a month — remains sobering. With unemployment remaining high year after year, the personal costs are rising.

Uncharacteristically, Joy Maguire-Dooley, the upbeat leader of the club, is worried.

“I think the economy is pretty tenuous right now, and this is the first time I really have thought that,” said Maguire-Dooley, director of Lisle Township Youth and Family Services.

“There are more people out longer than there ever have been, and I’m afraid a lot of people are losing hope and not putting money back into the economy. That’s what makes me nervous.”

There are people getting jobs. In some cases, they are even finding them more quickly than in the past, said Becky Brillon, program director at the center.

But many employers are telling Job Club members they are holding off on hiring, waiting to see what happens with the economy or with November’s election.

So the unemployed wait, their bills lapping at their feet, their moods fraying…

via Brotman: At Lisle Township Job Club, picture of unemployment is clear – chicagotribune.com.

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