New directions, old complaints

At the Baldwin Public Library’s annual Job Fair on Sept. 15, it quickly became clear why unemployment is at the top of the national agenda. The library’s Kevin B. Kamen Community Room was reserved for the three-hour fair, but the crowd of job seekers spilled out of the large hall into the library’s study and reading areas.

Nassau County’s unemployment rate stood at 6.8 percent in July, when the Department of Labor last measured it, and that was actually lower than last summer’s rate of 7.2 percent. New York state’s overall rate was 8 percent in July of 2011, down from 8.6 in 2010. Despite those modest gains, politicians of all stripes have described unemployment as nothing less than a crisis, and events like the BPL’s Job Fair are regularly overrun by those looking for work.

According to Angie Schenker, the fair’s coordinator, the level of anticipation for this year’s event surpassed last year’s, and, Schenker said, the library’s career counselor, Muriel Fienstein, had been “booked solid for weeks.”

“We’ve had a very consistent crowd,” said Schenker, who manned an information table outside the community room. Nearby, the library’s assistant director, Cathy Overton, estimated that some 300 people had passed through the fair in its first two hours. As for those they wanted to see, some 30 companies were represented, including Cablevision, the New York City Fire Department, Homecare Therapies, the insurance company New York Life, New York Community Bank, the Suffolk County Police Department and the State Department of Labor.

The majority of the job seekers were dressed in business suits, and many of those shuffling past the tables, resumes in hand, appeared to be from a demographic that, from all reports, is having a harder time getting hired than most: the middle- to late-career unemployed.

Elza Pisaro, 64, who was born in Baldwin but now lives in Freeport, spoke about the unique concerns of this group. “I’ve been out of work for two years,” explained Pisaro, who worked in sales for Home Depot for 14 years before being let go. “I looked other places, but they all try to lowball you. I have 30 years of work experience in retail, and they offered me $7.75 an hour at Sears.”