The Plight of Blue-Collar Workers

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His $38,000-a-year factory job as well as the three-bedroom home it helped him buy are gone. Two years ago, when his mortgage company finally foreclosed on him, he moved into the basement of his parents’ home. “I hate it,” he said. “It’s driving me nuts. I’m almost 40 years old and I’m not able to take care of myself. But I don’t have any other option.”

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In June, after 99 weeks on the dole, his unemployment benefits ran out. He hasn’t had to sell his truck and work tools — yet — and he recently picked up some temporary contract work that put a little cash in his pocket. But he spends most of his days at his parents’ home, trawling the Internet for jobs that don’t pan out or playing computer games — “anything,” he said, “that doesn’t cost money.”

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Stevenson insists he holds no grudge against the business community for its unwillingness to hire. “I understand they have to hoard the money because they don’t know what’s coming around the corner,” he said. “They wonder what DC’s going to do. … They know healthcare reform is around the corner. Everybody’s real tentative.”And even though he’s been forced to move back in with his parents and has virtually no income, he opposes Obama’s proposal to let some tax cuts for the wealthy, dating back to George W. Bush’s presidency, expire at year’s end in order to raise revenue and reduce the deficit. “How is more people, keeping more of the money they earn, bad for the economy?” he said. “The answer is — it’s not.”

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Perhaps most surprisingly, Stevenson says he’s worried Obama and the Democratic Congress may move to extend unemployment benefits past 99 weeks early this fall in an effort to curry popular support ahead of the midterm vote. “That could be the October surprise,” he said, “to try to buy people’s votes.”