The Deeper Dig: A year without work

The Deeper Dig is a biweekly podcast from the VTDigger newsroom, hosted and produced by Sam Gale Rosen. Listen below, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify or anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Angela Alario is looking for a technician.

Alario Tech, the Stowe-based IT services company Angela runs with her husband, typically operates with a staff of four. Lately, she said, it’s been more like two and a half. 

The company provides tech support for businesses and individuals. With the widespread shift to remote work during the pandemic, the past year has been one of Alario’s busiest ever.

But hiring has been impossible, she said. A listing on a local job site yielded nothing — “not a single resume or email or anything.”

A few dozen out-of-state resumes came in through Indeed, a national job listings site. But Alario soon found out that none of the candidates actually intended to move to Vermont. They were only applying in order to meet their states’ work-search requirements for collecting unemployment benefits.

Alario believes those benefits are to blame for the lack of real interest among would-be applicants — and she doesn’t blame people for taking advantage. “If they don’t have to show up for work and can collect an unemployment check,” she asked, “why rush to go back?”

A longstanding debate over whether enhanced benefits could make it too easy for workers to stay on the sidelines has resurged as employers across Vermont’s economy scramble to fill positions. Some businesses have been stretched since the early days of the pandemic, while many others are trying to staff up before the planned relaxing of restrictions on indoor businesses this Saturday. 

Meanwhile, about 31,000 Vermonters continued to collect unemployment benefits through March, according to state data. Those benefits have been augmented with federal supplements on and off throughout the pandemic, with the current enhancement scheduled to remain through September.

Vermonters collecting benefits during the pandemic also were not required to apply for jobs. Michael Harrington, commissioner of the Department of Labor, announced Tuesday that a work-search mandate would resume May 9.

In discussions over proposed state-level changes in unemployment insurance, local business leaders have said the enhanced federal benefits are driving employers’ staffing woes. But many economists argue that the picture is more complicated, and interviews with Vermonters collecting unemployment insurance reveal a variety of reasons for the discrepancy.

Many say the jobs available are undesirable or pay too little, and accepting a pay cut or an entry-level position now would set them back in the post-pandemic economy. For some, health conditions or child care obligations lock them out of the workforce until herd immunity from Covid-19 is guaranteed. In some cases, the expanded benefits — considered by some economists to be like a temporary universal basic income system — have given recipients the space to pursue educational opportunities or a career change.

None expects the situation to change until the unemployment benefits do.

‘Super competitive’

Like many restaurant workers, Maureen Fowler lost her job in March 2020. She and her husband, both experienced culinary professionals, had moved to Vermont from Pennsylvania the year before to work at ski resorts.

After a brief return to work over the summer, they were laid off again in September. Their job searches began just as Covid-19 cases in the region began to ramp back up.

Fowler said she’s noticed the recent demand for employees — just not employees like her and her husband. She has a culinary degree and 10 years of experience. He typically works at a management level. 

“So many people across the country lost their upper-level management chef jobs that, if there used to be 10 people applying for the job, there’s 50 now,” she said. “It’s super competitive.”

After about five months and 35 interviews, she said, her husband found a suitable position — back in Pennsylvania. “In Vermont, unfortunately, at the level that my husband had to be employed, there’s just not a lot of options here for us,” she said.

In part, Fowler said, they’ve held out for the right jobs because the past year was so turbulent. 

Before the pandemic, she and her husband had never filed for unemployment, and getting steady payments was a challenge. Early on, the flood of new claims overwhelmed the Department of Labor, resulting in months of delays for some recipients. By the time Fowler and her husband were laid off again, the initial federal supplement had expired.

The couple took on debt to fill the gaps, she said. The current benefits have kept them afloat during the prolonged job search as Fowler begins taking classes to move into social work — a career she hopes will be more stable.

“Some people will say, ‘Well, people are getting this money to sit at home — why would they go out and look for a job?’” she said. “But to me, I think that it’s just really allowing people to still take care of themselves and their families and get themselves where they really want to be.”

Waiting it out

Before the pandemic, Howie Ires worked as a stagehand. For each gig, he would commute from Windham to New York City, sometimes finding short-term housing while he set up a show. His work dropped off suddenly in spring 2020 — scenery for the last production he had lined up is still collecting dust at the Astor Place Theatre, Ires said.

Ires has been collecting unemployment since then. He, too, has seen the demand for workers in other fields. But those jobs have rarely been a match for his skills.

“I’m not going to say I haven’t been looking for work,” Ires said. “I have all my feelers out, but I’m not really looking to change careers, either.”

Ires, who is in his 60s, has worked in live theater since high school. He’s grateful to have the experience to get paid well for doing what he loves — and said taking on another kind of work would likely pay half of what he typically makes. 

Plus, pre-vaccination, his age put him at higher risk for illness. Even if there had been work, he said, “there’s no way to be socially distant in a Broadway theater.”

Ires said in previous slow periods, he lived on “plain old unemployment,” so the supplemental benefits did not drastically affect his finances. Instead, he spent that money in the community. “It’s let me buy stuff for my garden and stuff for my projects and not have to sweat it — not have to scrape around to try and find work in another field,” Ires said.

He’s held out mainly because he knows the work will come back when the pandemic is over. “Theater has been around for thousands of years, through pandemics and every kind of catastrophe,” he said. “People want to sit in theaters, and people want to congregate. I’m just grateful that I can wait it out.”

‘Trying to survive’

For Jodi Hoyt, the supplemental benefits are hardly a luxury — they are a lifeline.

As a registered nurse, Hoyt worked for an adult day care program in Quechee before the pandemic hit. One day last spring, she said, the seniors went home and didn’t come back. Hoyt was furloughed immediately.

Her oldest son’s school went virtual, and she pulled her middle child out of day care to protect her 10-month-old daughter, who is immunocompromised. 

Her husband is a truck driver and cannot provide regular child care. Work was off the table for her, Hoyt said. “My choice was either put my child — my baby — in jeopardy, lose my son’s education or leave my job.”

Since then, she has been buoyed by a patchwork of federal and state benefit programs, from unemployment assistance and mortgage relief to the Farmers to Families food box program. The checks go straight to payments that have lapsed since her furlough, Hoyt said — her mortgage and car payments, plus student loans from the nursing degree that she cannot currently put to use.

“It’s always been a catch-up,” she said. “I feel like we’ve just been chasing our tail.”

The process has been mentally exhausting, Hoyt said. She had never collected unemployment before last year, and she feels guilty being a medical professional stuck at home during a public health crisis. 

“Some days, I feel like I’m doing the right thing, and I’m putting my daughter first,” she said. “But then other days … maybe I should be on the front lines? Maybe I’m being too precautious.”

Hoyt tears up when she hears people talk about a return to normalcy. The risk to her family won’t fade, she said, until her children can be vaccinated — likely a far-off prospect. She’s worried that policymakers will allow pandemic aid programs to expire in the meantime, leaving her family in a financial hole.

“It saddens me that people are like, ‘Oh, they’re just lazy,’” Hoyt said. “I’m just trying to survive and keep my family fed and a roof over their head.”

Changes ahead

The state’s next moves could have a significant impact.

When the work-search mandate is reinstated, benefit recipients will be required to apply for at least three jobs per week. If “suitable work” is offered, meaning a job that is in line with the applicant’s skills and experience, they are required to accept it or lose their benefits.

Cameron Wood, director of unemployment for the Department of Labor, said Friday that the department had been hearing from eager business owners. “Their biggest gripe right now is: Get the work search back into place. Get people looking for work because we have all these jobs that we’re not able to get people to fulfill.”

Speaking to the House Commerce & Economic Development Committee, Wood said the department had supported the expanded eligibility and benefit amounts throughout the past year but now expected the vaccine rollout would allow more people to safely reenter the workforce.

“We want to incentivize people to go back to work and have the jobs to go back to,” Wood said.

The bill under consideration, S.10, led to contentious negotiations in the Senate. It would raise the maximum weekly benefit for unemployment insurance recipients by 20% for a year and permanently send additional $50-a-week payments to claimants with dependent children. It would also spread a projected hike in businesses’ unemployment insurance taxes over several years. The bill is currently under consideration in the House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development.

The work-search requirement, though, is up to the governor. 

Harrington, the labor commissioner, said Tuesday that the department would take Covid-related circumstances into account when the mandate is reinstated in May. People caring for a loved one, those with certain qualifying health conditions and parents with children learning remotely would be exempted from the requirement.

More details will be announced later this week, Harrington said.

Maureen Fowler, the former restaurant worker, said she was grateful that she hasn’t had to accept a job she didn’t want.

“I think that if people jumped into something that’s not going to be sustainable for them, it’s just going to end up setting them back a year down the road, two years down the road,” Fowler said.

Fowler said she hopes those weighing in on the unemployment system consider the nuances of looking for work. “It’s really not as easy as, ‘People are hiring. Go get a job.’ There’s a lot of factors that go into it — relocation, child care, what’s going to be sustainable for your family in the long term. So I would just say, give yourself some patience and grace, and give others patience and grace.”

---

Vermont's newsletter

Request a correction

Submit a tip

---