President Obama's jobs speech this week will resonate in Louisiana

WASHINGTON -- When New Orleanian Kenneth Metoyer lost his technician's job with a major oil company last year, it was a new and worrisome predicament.

obama.jpgView full sizePresident Barack Obama is expected on Thursday to propose tax relief for workers and small businesses, and specific programs to encourage companies to hire the long-term unemployed.

"I've never been in that situation before," said Metoyer, 53. "I've been employed for 30 years and it was a shock."

As President Barack Obama prepares to address a joint session of Congress on Thursday about the nation's continuing unemployment problem, the nation is facing growing numbers of jobless Americans, who like Metoyer had decades of uninterrupted employment, often for the same company.

Louisiana Workforce Commission Executive Director Curt Eysink said some of those having the hardest time finding new jobs are those who have never before been unemployed and therefore are less familiar with the current trend of online job applications.

Metoyer said he was one of the fortunate ones. After six months out of work, he got help from the Workforce Commission's Baton Rouge office and found a chemical company job checking for leaks.

Advice for the president

His advice to the president: With many companies still not hiring, the government needs to add funding for highway construction and other infrastructure work to create jobs the private sector isn't providing.

That approach, though, is likely to face opposition from Republicans who say the president's nearly $900 billion stimulus package, enacted shortly after he took office in 2009, didn't stop the unemployment rate from jumping past 8 percent all the way to the current 9.1 percent.

"One thing that is scaring businesses away from taking risks and spending money on expansion or new hiring is uncertainty -- things like cap and trade (a proposal designed to reduce carbon emissions) and the drilling moratorium," said Eysink, reflecting the view of GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Democrats argue that Obama has pulled back on environmental regulations, including cancellation Friday of planned new ozone regulations, and that the president agreed last December to continue the Bush tax cuts, a move the GOP predicted would reassure businesses to begin hiring again. The tax agreement, however, like the president's 2009 stimulus package, failed to make a major dent in jobless numbers.

Jobs are likely to be the major issue in the 2012 presidential election - little wonder when unemployment is touching people like Metoyer who worked for three decades without ever losing a job.

'There's a lot of panic'

Another worker who lost his job after steady employment with the same company is Terry Lee, 48, of Bastrop, whose livelihood disappeared when the International Paper Mill in his town closed in 2008. He had worked there 19 years.

"Yeah, there's a lot of panic after you lose a job after all those years," Lee said. "There weren't many jobs, period, in that area, and suddenly there are 300 people all looking for work at the time. It was frightening."

Fortunately, Lee said, he qualified for a U.S. Department of Labor training program that enabled him to receive tuition for computer and technology training at an Arkansas college. Now, he's a computer technician at Morehouse General Hospital.

"I feel a lot more secure," Lee said. "There's a lot more computer and technical jobs than positions at U.S. paper mills."

Louisiana situation improving

While the U.S. job picture remains gloomy -- officials Friday reported flat job growth in August and a continuing 9.1 percent unemployment rate -- the situation in Louisiana appears to be improving, according to state officials.

One positive sign, Eysink said, is that it's now taking, on average, 15 or 16 weeks for unemployed state residents to find a job, down from a peak of 22 months.

Eysink said the state has begun a pilot program in Acadiana in which people who apply for unemployment insurance and don't seem to be making progress finding a job are brought in to work directly with state employment experts for help with resumes and other tips to finding work.

Gene Sperling, a key Obama economic adviser, said the president Thursday will propose tax relief for workers and small businesses, and specific programs to encourage companies to hire the long-term unemployed.

"He will be very specific about what we can do that can have a meaningful impact on job growth in the economy right away," Sperling said.

Republicans, however, have remained adamant against any proposals to increase federal spending or add to the deficit.

"Nancy Pelosi (the House Democratic leader) and Barack Obama's spending binge policies have created no jobs," Rep. Jeff Landry, R-New Iberia, said. "We must get our fiscal house in order; that is why I voted against the debt ceiling increase. Now, we must complete step two: eliminating red tape strangling job growth and immediately and fully opening the Gulf of Mexico to drilling so we can put Americans back to work."

Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans, said Republicans should be open to doing more than advocating for fewer regulations and debt reduction.

"There is a common enemy, and that's unemployment," Richmond said. "People are very, very frustrated and most of the frustration is targeted at Republicans. The American people are very smart, and they can see that the Republicans have waged a war on the president, and they want to win the White House by any means necessary. The casualty of that war that the Republicans are waging are the 14.1 million people in this country that are unemployed. It's sinful. It's wrong."


Bruce Alpert can be reached at or 202.450.1406.