Unemployment workers face layoffs

Kai Ryssdal Aug 7, 2012
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Unemployment workers face layoffs

Kai Ryssdal Aug 7, 2012
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You know the people who help people who are laid off? Well, they’re getting laid off.

More people finding work means fewer workers are needed in state unemployment offices. Jim Gibbons has worked for the Michigan unemployment office since 2009, and he’s waiting to hear whether he might soon join the ranks of the unemployed.

“A couple of Mondays ago we were told about halfway through the day that the agency is looking at close to 400 personnel being cut from the agency,” he says.

Gibbons is a Vietnam veteran who spent more than 20 years in the auto industry. He says he’s reinvented himself before, and if he needs to, he’ll reinvent himself again.

“I was able to acquire new skills and have done a pretty good job of it and now I may be facing a layoff.”

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