Business

After 1,056 resumes, 99-weeker gets part-time job

By her own count Kathy Chambers has applied for 1,056 jobs since being laid off by Union Carbide in 2006, where she worked for 19 years.

She keeps track on a spreadsheet that goes back to April 2007, when she completed job retraining as a paralegal that she paid for with half her severance pay.

Kathy also attended secretarial school and has a degree in communications from the State University of New York in New Paltz.

Only a handful of the 1,056 resumes she mailed out resulted in even an initial interview. In fact, there have been only two interviews this year.

Kathy has been unemployed for most of the time since 2006 and her savings are now exhausted. The few jobs she did get were all temporary at salaries that didn’t beat out the unemployment benefits she was receiving.

Just last week Kathy was hired by a Staples store near her Putnam County home to work 20 hours a week at $8.65 an hour.

It’s not her ideal job, but she’s thrilled anyway, and not only because Kathy is almost out of unemployment benefits.

Kathy is, in the parlance of the unemployed, a 99-weeker — someone about to max out of his jobless benefits. Technically Kathy is also employed by Kohl’s, the department store. But she hasn’t received any work there for more than a month.

“It’s like the last 15 minutes of a movie when something positive happens in the nick of time,” Kathy says of the Staples job.

Kathy is like millions of others who currently find themselves unemployed or under-employed: she is a long-term worker who doesn’t feel comfortable without a job and can’t help getting a little testy when people suggest possible malingering by the jobless.

She’s hoping things improve when students go back to school and stores like Kohl’s and Staples will need to fill spots. Or maybe by this Christmas. . .or maybe. . .

On Friday, the Labor Department will release the latest statistics on the job market for July. The experts are expecting the numbers to look something like this: an unemployment rate increase to 9.6 percent from 9.5 percent and the loss of 116,000 jobs compared with 125,000 in June.

July’s number will include 144,000 Census 2010 positions that are no longer needed.

Instead of just statistics in this column I decided to interview one of the people behind the numbers. Here’s Kathy.

Me: From the list you showed me, you applied for 1,056 jobs!

Kathy: Those are just the ones I remembered to log in. I’ll also do a mass mailing to all the law offices in the area. And I’m registered with all the temporary agencies in the area. I check in with them by e-mail every week to tell them I’m available.

Me: You got laid off in 2006? That’s the last time you had a full-time job?

Kathy: Yes.

Me: Tell me what the market is like out there.

Kathy: Oh, it’s awful and it just seems to be getting worse. Whenever I go on an interview one of the questions I’d ask is ‘How many people responded to your ad?’ In the beginning there was 50 people. The last time I had asked they said about 500.

Me: Wow! Do you think you are giving it a whole-hearted effort?

Kathy: Oh God, yes!

Me: Explain. You’re personable, who’s getting these jobs?

Kathy: That what I’d like to know. (Laughs) So many people are overqualified for the jobs they are getting. I went to this one place that was looking for office help and they said they were getting people with master’s degrees, people with Ph.D.s all applying for what would have been a menial job.

Me: You did get recently hired by Staples, correct?

Kathy: Believe it or not, that’s the only thing I could find. I couldn’t find a single thing in an office.

Me: Are you still collecting unemployment benefits?

Kathy: Well, I won’t be collecting it very long because I have two jobs even though my job at Kohl’s has gone a month without getting any hours.

Me: Are you limiting your search?

Kathy: I have a pretty wide search area — about a 40-mile radius.

Me: So you are pretty flexible.

Kathy: Yeah.

Me: I see from your list that you are pretty much going down the alphabet of companies.

Kathy: Absolutely. Anything that requires any kind of secretarial skills, paralegal skills — everything.

Me: So they just don’t call you back.

Kathy: The people doing the hiring can be so super-picky now. They do not have the patience these days to train anybody.

Me: So how do you feed yourself?

Kathy: I live with my 88-year-old father.

Me: If you weren’t living there, how would you survive?

Kathy: I wouldn’t. Honestly, I wouldn’t. I’d be living in a cardboard box behind some retailer.

jcrudele@nypost.com