More than 1,000 people were left wondering, “what’s next”, when General Motors shut its Janesville plant earlier this year. Now the city has a 13 percent unemployment rate-- one of the highest in the state. Many of the unemployed here are turning to technical schools and community colleges, hoping the health care industry could be their second chance. WUWM’s LaToya Dennis has more.
The parking lot at the Janesville General Motors plant is pretty much empty these days, outside of a couple security vehicles. Until a few months ago, around 1,200 employees showed up to work here every day. Jill Krupke is one of those people. She worked on the line for more than three decades, but at the age of 53, Krupke retired when the plant closed.
“It’s not what I wanted to do because I’m too young to retire and I’m not really financially set to retire yet, but that was the only option I had,” Krupke says.
Krupke says she’s able to make ends meet for now, with the money she receives from her pension and a little savings. The money in the bank won’t last long because three of her four kids still live at home. She says real retirement isn’t an option.
“So I thought, well I’ll retire and then I will find another job, I’ll go to school or I’ll find another job doing something else,” Krupke says.
Krupke recently started classes at Blackhawk Technical College in Janesville.
“I’m taking introduction to health care computing, which is very hard for me too because I don’t get along with computers very well,” Krupke says.
Federal grant money is paying for Krupke’s schooling. It’s part of a program to get dislocated workers like her back in the job market. She’s enrolled in a five week program to become a certified nursing assistant and a phlebotomist. She says deciding what to study was easy.
“I was a volunteer EMT for nine years. And so I kinda was interested in the medical field,” Krupke says.
Around the country, people are turning to health care as their second or even third career. Ann Krause is Dean of Human and Protective Services at Blackhawk. She’s concerned that some are looking only at the amount of money they could make in a given profession.
“A lot of the dislocated workers are used to getting really good paychecks. So they don’t want to go work at a place where they’re not going to get the wages they’re accustomed to,” Krause says.
CNA and phlebotomy student Jill Krupke will have to take a pay cut. She brought home around $35,000 while working for GM, but only stands to make around $20,000 as a nursing assistant. And Krause says it takes a certain kind of person to work in health care. That’s why Blackhawk has teamed up with local organizations to make sure people looking to get back to work, are making smart choices.
“We’ve worked with the Southwest Workforce Development board and the job center to do some interest testing so that we’re not putting students into careers that aren’t suited for health careers. We’re also trying to start students with classes that give them a taste of what is health care before they get into a two year associate degree program and decide no, it’s not for me,” Krause says.
Now at this point, I should probably address the purple elephant in the room-- hospitals across the country are instituting hiring freezes and laying off employees. And a hospital construction project here in Janesville was recently put on hold. So why again are displaced workers turning to health care?
Judy Warmuth has an answer. She’s with the Wisconsin Hospital Association.
“When the economy recovers or when those older people who are in health care, we know how old the workforce is in health care, when they do need to retire because they can’t physically do the job anymore we’re going to have an amazing array of jobs,” Warmuth says.
The reason for the current health care slowdown is that people are not going in for elective procedures. Warmuth says still, the number of uninsured and under insured showing up in emergency rooms is going up.
“All of our places aren’t hiring at the rate they were, but they continue to hire,” Warmuth says.
Nursing assistant and phlebotomy student Jill Krupke says the prospect of not finding a job when she’s done with school in a few weeks keeps her up at night.
“And if I can’t find a job what’s going to happen? Like I say, am I going to lose my house, am I going to be able to get food for my kids, everything. Yeah, I worry about everything,” Krupke says.
Krupke hopes to still enjoy retirement some day. You know, the kind where you can sit back and enjoy life after working hard for more than 40 years.
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