Millions of Americans forced to work part time
NEW YORK -- The U.S. economy has regained all the private-sector jobs it lost in the Great Recession; it took six years. The Labor Department said Friday that America added 192,000 jobs in March. The unemployment rate remained 6.7 percent.
After five years of being in and out of work, Tara Dublin found a job a few weeks ago as a hostess at a restaurant in Portland, Ore..
"I've been hired by this restaurant I absolutely love, but it's a part-time position," Dublin says.
She makes $11 an hour, plus tips.
In March, of the 192,000 jobs created, 30,000 were in food services. Restaurants and bars have added 323,000 workers over the past year, but Dublin is earning a fraction of what she used to make.
"The first time I came home and saw a foreclosure notice taped to my front door and my sons saw it, that was a really bad day," Dublin says.
Dublin, a divorced mother of two, was laid off from her dream job as a Portland radio show host in 2009. She found work as a social media analyst early last year, but after eight months was laid off from that job, too.
"I want to go to sleep at night and not have numbers running through my head," she says. "How much money do I have until my food benefits run out? How much do I have left on my car? How do I feed my kids today? I always have math in my head, now."
In the Labor Department statistics, Dublin falls into the category of people "forced" to work part time. There are some 7.4 million of them in America.