It's a Hopeless Job Market Out There

for those who are forced to have to look for work:

IF JOBLESS workers have to make a second visit to the unemployment office on Chicago's West Lawrence Avenue, an already big problem must be getting worse.

With the unemployment system mostly automated, most laid-off workers simply show up once to file, then update their status online or by telephone. So even though Illinois' jobless rate is 10 percent--the 14th highest among states--even late on a rainy Friday afternoon in October, the number of people in the office wasn't big. But their problems were.

The workers at the center--formally known as the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES)--are unfailingly polite, if a bit harried. "You have to wait until Obama extends the unemployment benefits," one told a client for the third--or maybe the fourth--time. But the claimant, an African American woman in her mid-thirties, lingered at the counter a moment further, in hope of some solution to the looming expiration of her benefits.

It is just absolutely hopeless.