Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

The jobless: Stories behind the statistics

Meligan

Tiffany Brown

Laid off as a floor manager in May after 11 years at Mandalay Bay, Lisa Meligan looks for work Thursday at Nevada JobConnect.

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For many Nevadans, the year 2009, mercifully, is over. It was one of the worst years for Nevada workers since World War II. When the year began, the unemployment rate was less than 10 percent, although climbing rapidly. It fell in November to 12.3 percent from its high above 13 percent, but only because many residents left for other states or were so discouraged that they quit looking for work.

The state unemployment office in North Las Vegas, which carries the more hopeful name JobConnect, is mostly empty on New Year’s Eve. The staff says it is a temporary respite from the usual crowded bustle of the hope-deprived and the irritable.

Prospects do not seem to be improving as the year ends. One worker says management is discouraging him from sending workers to training programs, which cost the state money. “They tell me, ‘Why bother sending them to training? There’s no work anywhere,’ ” he says.

Lisa Meligan

Lisa Meligan, 46, started busing tables at 16 at Binion's. Her mother worked there for 46 years and knew Ted Binion.

Binion, she said, sent her to dealer school and she became a dealer. She moved to the Golden Nugget and then Mandalay Bay, where she was a floor manager for nearly 11 years before being laid off in May. She was earning nearly $80,000 a year.

Meligan was born and raised in the valley, and is unemployed for the first time.

She lost her Summerlin home. Her vehicle, too. She’s moved in with her mother. Since the layoff and losing her house, her teenage children have moved in with their dad.

From a lifetime of standing and walking, she has painful bulging discs, but had to stop going to the doctor because she no longer has health insurance. She had to wean herself from years of painkillers, and that wasn’t easy. Now she can’t sleep because of pain and stress.

She reads and takes walks. Without money or a car, there’s not much else to do, she says.

Meligan is considering leaving for Mississippi or other places where there might be work in the gaming industry. She’s applied everywhere in town, and knows the prospects aren’t good here.

Despite it all, she’s not bitter or angry. “I’m not the only one. So I don’t feel singled out.”

“I still have some hope,” she says.

Julian Gomez

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Applying for unemployment for the first time in his life, Julian Gomez, who has two children and a third on the way, uses a computer to fill out the application Thursday at Nevada JobConnect in North Las Vegas.

Julian Gomez, 30, is on a computer New Year’s Eve at JobConnect, completing an application for unemployment benefits for the first time in his life. He’s worked without interruption since he was 16.

He came here from California during the boom three years ago, like so many before him. He drives a tour bus, and although he’s still employed, his hours have been whittled down to next to nothing. That started about three or four months ago. He’s on call, working every two or three days.

He has two daughters, ages 7 and 17 months, and another on the way.

“It’s basically my work, and my family,” he says of his world.

Gomez is strikingly calm and composed, considering what he’s facing.

“The more stressed you get, the worse it gets,” he says.

And with that, he turns back to the computer terminal.

Nelson Garcia

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Nelson Garcia, who worked at Imperial Palace but now is just on call to work there, borrows a phone to call the unemployment office.

Nelson Garcia is on the phone, but on hold, with the state unemployment office. He’s been on hold two or three hours, trying to correct what he believes is an accounting error that has cost him some of the unemployment benefits he is owed.

In about 20 Sun interviews with the unemployed during the past month, these bureaucratic snafus are not uncommon.

Garcia is a banquet server at the Imperial Palace, but had his hours cut, finally down to nothing a month or two ago. Now he’s just on call.

He came to the United States in 1996 from Honduras and learned his fluent English in night school and on the street. He is working toward citizenship, he says.

He moved to Las Vegas in 2000. Before the Imperial Palace, he worked for the linen laundry company Mission Industries.

Garcia lost his house and says the stress weighs on him. He cannot sleep at night. “All the money, it just goes down and down.”

His best friend, who had a wife and four children, killed himself recently. They had worked together at Imperial Palace. Garcia says his friend suffered the weight of joblessness combined with the big responsibilities of a young family.

“My responsibility is to take care of his wife,” he says.

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