Sandwich board job hunter finds job!!!

He found a job, the sandwich board job hunter finally found a job which suggests the job creation in this economy is going to skyrocket. Maybe mr biden is right about the 500,000 a month job creation coming up next month. This was the quickest recession in history.




Sandwich-board job hunter finds work after 2 years (AP)
Sat Apr 24th, 2010 11:30 AM EDT

NEW YORK - When laid-off toy company executive Paul Nawrocki hit the streets of Manhattan wearing a sandwich board and handing out his resume, he became the face of the recession.

At the end of 2008, with the giants of Wall Street collapsing and bank accounts dwindling, this lone, mustachioed job hunter with the sign proclaiming he was "almost homeless" seemed like a mirror of a slumping nation's fears and troubles.

Nawrocki appeared on CNN and was shadowed by South American photojournalists. In a handful of weeks, he gave more than 100 interviews in TV studios and on the street. He began to think of his photograph like a Post-it note — stuck next to seemingly every article about the economy.

The world decided he was a weather vane for the nation's economic troubles. And maybe he was: Even though the attention faded, his troubles did not.

Having the eyes of the world on him didn't land the then-59-year-old any viable job interviews . His wife was sick, and keeping his health care was a struggle. He began to decide between the doctors and the mortgage.

Well, if Paul Nawrocki is a sign of the times, then times are looking up.

Because last month, after collecting 99 weeks of unemployment, Nawrocki finally found a job.

He's not the only one. While unemployment remains high, the nation added 162,000 jobs last month — the first significant job growth since the downturn began.

"It was good. It felt good," the Beacon, N.Y., resident says of his first day back at an office — 25 months after he was asked to leave his old one. "It felt like all new again because it had been so long."

Nawrocki hopes he's back on his feet after the long, dark stretch. But he knows he's still on shaky footing. The financial damage of the last two years won't just disappear.

"We're still not out of the woods," he says now. He has two mortgages on his home 70 miles north of Manhattan .

"One of our mortgages — I'm like six months behind. I don't know how I'm going to be able to catch up."

Nawrocki and his wife declared bankruptcy last year. They got food stamps. They went to food banks. They took gifts from family.

For months, he's been waiting fearfully for his mortgage company to call — waiting for a foreclosure notice, for something. But so far, nothing has happened.

In the end, his path back to work wasn't through his television appearances, but through old-fashioned networking. He went to a toy-industry fair, and a friend introduced him to the man who would become his boss. Nawrocki believes the tales of his sandwich-board days helped him land an interview.

His paycheck is nearly half the size; he had made almost $100,000 a year. And his title is a little less grand.

But the job still seems a wondrous, unlikely rescue — as though a hand had descended from the sky at the last possible moment.

"I had reached the limit, the last week," he recounted. "And they called and had me start the next week. ... Through this whole experience it's been like that. We get right to the edge, and then ..." he trails off.

And then. Hope returns.

 

If this guy was actually smart, he would have left New York long ago.

 

How was he able to declare bankruptcy and keep his house?

 

Yeah, I could see if the bk trustee determined that there was no equity in the house, then he wouldn't force its sale.

I thought judges were not allowed to require reductions in mortgage principal balances.

 

keep the house...you just likely lose it to foreclosure some months later since you couldn't afford the payments to begin with, period...

 

First, you can exclude any asset you have from a bankruptcy if you desire (by reaffirming the debt), including your home (assuming you keep making the payments of course). If you do include the house in the BK, the bank will file for a motion for release and continue the foreclosure process. His equity is irrelevant. All that matters is whether you make the payments or do a formal workout of some kind if you fell behind.

S2007S,

The fact you would consider this a positive for the economy and how great things are going and how many jobs we are creating is at best naïve IMHO. I would hardly call it a victory when he took a 50% pay cut in one of the most expensive areas in the world. It will be pretty tough catching up his mortgage (which he obviously reaffirmed on or they wouldn’t even be talking to him until his BK was released/discharged/concluded). While it is good he found something, he has a lot of catching up to do so isn’t likely to be contributing to a “recovery” anytime soon.

Good trading

TM

 

Almost $100k? Isn't it near minimum wage by NYC standard?

 

So he found a job right after his unemployment ran out? Sounds like he could have got off his ass and found a job in half the time if those benefits ran out twice as fast. He was using the safety net as a hammock, and when the gravy train ended, he got work.

 

Agreed.

Either that, or he was working somewhere off the books and still collecting his unemployment checks.

So shady how he happened to get hired after his 99th and final week on the unemployment line.

 

My first job in NYC paid a measly $92,000 a year. It was truly awful, and felt much worse than living on minimum wage.