Lindsay Whitehurst, Herald Bulletin
Jeremy Willcox is heading out of Anderson. A native of the area, he moved north to Goshen and worked in an RV factory for several years before a break-up with his fiancé sent him packing home to Anderson.
But now he's heading back north. Why?
"There are no jobs around," he said.
The 22-year-old wore a red sweatshirt and jeans as he sat in the office at Rush Temporaries Inc., a temporary employment agency in Anderson.
He was looking for a short-term job to save up money for the trip back to Goshen.
"Up there, I was making $1,100 a week after taxes," he said. "There aren't jobs like that here."
While Willcox wasn't the victim of a layoff, he has a lot in common with the thousands of workers laid off from factories in recent years, most notably Guide Corp.
The pool of available workers is growing in Anderson but the amount of temporary work is dropping precipitously, and some workers are heading back to the classroom in hopes of finding a better job.
"We used to have more jobs than people," Rush Temporaries Client Relations Manager Suzi Hess said. "Now we have more people than jobs."
About five years ago, the agency had about 7,000 hours of work a week for people willing to do it, Hess said.
Now, they offer about 1,000 hours a week.
But while that pool of jobs is shrinking, the pool of workers who need it is increasing.
"We used to do six applications a day, maybe," Hess said. "Now we sometimes do that within two hours of opening."
Over the last five years, she said, the number of people Rush Temporaries places in jobs has decreased by about 50 percent, from about 200 people a week to about 100 people.
The business works by putting companies who need temporary labor in touch with workers who want to do it. Their revenues come from the companies; workers don't pay anything.
They've been in Anderson since 1988, and currently list about 2,000 people actively seeking work. Of those, about 1,200 are actively working.
Five years ago, about 200 people were able to work full-time, 40 hours a week with one temporary job or piecing together many jobs.
Over the last five years, however, that number has dropped to 100 people.
To sign up with the agency, people come in and fill out an application that looks similar to a basic job application, with name, address, phone number, former places of employment, and skills.
Applicants take a drug screen and go through a criminal background check. The agency does take people with a record.
"Some companies don't mind it, others do," Hess said.
They don't, however, list people who don't pass a drug test.
Work seekers are responsible for calling each day to see if there is work available.
"We are putting a lot less people to work because the economy is so bad," Hess said.
But Madison County isn't alone in experiencing mass layoffs. Hoosiers filed the fifth-highest number of unemployment claims due to mass layoffs in the nation last month, according to statistics released this week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
More than 7,200 claims were filed due to mass layoffs in November. A mass layoff is 50 or more people. That represents an increase of 3,000 claims from October.
The Guide Corp. shut-down announced in October will affect about 1,400 people, Marc Scharnowske, executive director of the Madison County unemployment agency JobSource, said.
This week, his agency was at the United Auto Workers Local 663 union hall, signing up people at a clip that barely left time to breathe. In two days, about 800 people signed up, Scharnowske said.
"The first step is get them in a situation where they'll be receiving unemployment insurance. The second step is a process of long-term career development, in many cases re-training, providing information to them on how to go back to school," he said.
One laid-off worker (though not a Guide employee) who decided to go back is 52-year-old Billie Box.
A young mother, Box dropped out of high school, but worked her way up from clerk to estimator at a construction company.
Then her company was bought out, and, in 1995, she was laid off in favor of an employee with a two-year degree.
"They had to make a choice, and since he had a two-year degree, they said he had to be their choice," she said. "I made up my mind to get a degree."
She went to Indiana Business College, and now she's a senior financial aid analyst at the school.
Though her salary hasn't increased significantly since her days as an estimator, she's got job security and a chance for advancement, Box said.
And she's working on a bachelor's degree.
"For all the rocks I encountered on my road, I'm laying stones for my kids and grandkids to step on," she said. "Even a high school education isn't enough anymore. You have to have some college."
Indiana Business College's Anderson campus has experienced slow but steady growth, and now has about 400 students.
They offer two-year degrees in business and medicine, and have approximately 93 percent of their students find jobs upon graduation.
Director of Career Services Marcy Fry said the school usually places about 60 percent of the graduating class within Madison County.
But the education isn't cheap. Though financial-aid packages are widely available, and many companies offered educational help to their laid-off employees, the total price tag at Indiana Business College is $19,000 for a two-year business degree and $20,000 for a medical degree.
Salaries, Fry said, are about $10 to $13, or $14 an hour on the high end.
She said she cautions students to "be mindful of the changing mindset," not to expect the kind of salaries and benefits offered at automotive factories during their heyday.
Shawn Swindell, 40, knows all about that. Her husband Trent, 41, got laid off when the Delco Remy plant he worked at closed its doors about four years ago.
"It leaves a sense of uncertainty about the present and a lack of security about the future," she said. They had one son in college at the time, and another one in middle school.
Unemployment pays about half his old salary. While the family gets by on that, combined with her income as office manager at the Madison County Commissioners Office, making ends meet can be a challenge.
We're still dealing with it; it certainly has created a hardship," she said. "We're fortunate enough that we had already been established, and we didn't have some of the other problems. A lot of his friends had to sell their homes."
But Trent Swindell used the education compensation to go back to school. He enrolled at Purdue University, and earned a degree in electrical engineering over the next two years.
His grades qualified him for a scholarship to earn a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering. He'll finish in a year and a half.
"If he would've stayed employed, he wouldn't have had the opportunity," she said. For workers at Guide or other layoffs, "I would recommend enrolling in schooling or educational (help) that might be offered."