Unemployment reaches 26-year high, takes me back to 1983

atching the economy unraveling over the past couple of years, an uneasy sense of familiarity has settled in. The phrase "deja vu" comes to mind far too often.

Now, news comes that the unemployment rate has jumped again, after falling in July for the first time in 15 months. It stands at 9.7% now, up from 9.4% in July, the highest the unemployment rate has been since June 1983.

Ahh, the summer of '83. That's where the sense of "been here, done that" has been hiding. From 1980-1983, the US experienced a bumpy economic ride and periods of recession that, in some respects, mirrored the one we face today.

Twenty-six years ago, I had a three-year-old, a one-year-old, an unraveling marriage, and was struggling to make ends meet despite an economy in free-fall. In the Northwest, the forest-products-dependent economy evaporated, as new regulations limited harvest and demand plummeted because of the recession. Nationwide, the economy tanked for more complicated reasons.

Then, double-digit inflation, Fed monetary policy, lingering effects from the joint embargo by OPEC and the oil countries, post-war anxiety and investment pessimism led to the implosion. Though the causes in the 80s may have differed from those of our current economic morrass, they created that same watershed 9.7% nationwide unemployment rate (much higher, then and now, in many states, regions and counties).

My sons were born in 1980 and 1982, both recession babies. Now adults, they face many of the the same economic factors that were familiar to my generation:

• falling GDP and corresponding high unemployment
• the young, inexperienced and undereducated (even seniors) competing for relatively low-wage jobs against people with years of experience and/or advanced degrees
• tight credit
• overflowing community and technical college classes
• college course fees rising much faster than inflation
• volatile energy markets and high-priced oil (though nothing like prices adjusted for wages and inflation during the OPEC embargo and the gas station lines of 73-74).

As I looked for work to support my sons back in 1984, about to be separated from my husband, nothing I found looked as though it was remotely realistic for me to be able to support my family. The only openings that were widely available were waitress, retail clerk, hospital nurse's aid, receptionist, fast food and other minimum-wage jobs (or barely above it).

Any job I had the skills to do would not pay me enough to cover child care while I was working and still have much left to live on, nor could I take my kids along with me (of course).

My best option appeared to be providing childcare in my own home, so I added on to the occasional sitting job for friends or family and became a daily care provider. I also became a part-time housekeeper during the time my sons visited with their father, shared my (rental) home with a series of friends, and took on many other odd jobs. Eventually, my name came to the top of the HUD Section 8 list and I began receiving a subsidy to help with rent.

In summer, we grew vegetables anywhere they would fit around the edges of the yard. Tomato plants stretched up to the roof and down again. I joined a Gatherers and Gleaners group for low-income residents. I went out to the farmer's fields and orchards after they were finished with them, after they were no longer profitable but still held usable produce. We got to pick them clean, keeping half of whatever we harvested. Participants donated the rest to the food bank and a senior meals program.

For years every summer, I canned and pickled everything in sight, asking neighbors with unused fruit trees if they minded if I harvested theirs. We bought "gunnysacks" of corn for 12 ears for a dollar, then froze them and made corn relish. Tomatoes became sauce and salsa, the bounty of Northwest fruits and berries went into a myriad of preserves, jams and spiced butters. The boys loved applesauce, so by November, the pantry was always lined with row upon row of jars full of their thick, tart-sweet favorite, fragrant with cinnamon.

Much as I had through my childhood, I also worked on farms doing field labor, picking strawberries, sugar snap peas, greenbeans, cherries and other summer crops. For two years, I worked for an organic snow pea farmer, doing field work for a few hours a day. My children could be right there alongside me, napping or playing, where I could earn money and didn't need to pay for childcare. The field work often came with a bonus: cheap or free produce that I could "put up" for the winter.

When my youngest turned three, I started college and began a work-study job. During my time in class, the children stayed with their father, with family or in preschool. The workstudy job was mostly in the evenings, so the kids stayed with family members. One night a week, the kids stayed overnight with my sister. Into the wee hours, I wrote, edited and helped "paste up" the college paper, which was my regular paid work-study job. Along with the paid work, I received a tuition waiver.

Working 25-30 hours per-week and taking from 12-20 credit hours per quarter, surviving off of grants, loans and food stamps, we made it. We could not have survived along the way, of course, without the help of family and friends. They regularly helped with child care, car repairs and in inevitable emergencies. (Child support never amounted to more than a few hundred dollars per year, when it did arrive).

Still, as I watch this generation suffer the effects of this economy, I need to remind myself, resiliency is not something reserved for my generation or for those before me. What we managed to survive and thrive, they are just as capable of doing, and perhaps moreso. Believe in their capabilities and strengths, give them room, let them grow. It's their time.