Portraits of Unemployment

This story was awarded First Place in Business Reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists’ Connecticut chapter in 2013.

In the spring of 2010, things seemed to be looking up for John Zuccerella.

After being unemployed for nearly two years, having been let go during the throes of the financial crisis from his job doing marketing for engineering and construction firms, the Greenwich resident landed a position with a company in New Haven.

But since October, when the company restructured and eliminated that position, Zuccerella has been back to scouring the job listing search engine Indeed.com, mining his social network for leads and going on interviews that lead to the dreaded response, “you have an excellent background, but…”

“It was very difficult,” said Zuccerella, who recently turned 43 and has two children, ages 9 and 5. “I didn’t truly expect it, to have my position eliminated. Hearing the news about the economy and everything like that, being thankful I have any kind of job, it was a shock, like, what am I going to do now?”

Even in Greenwich, a place synonymous with wealth, there are many people for whom luxury doesn’t mean dinners at the Homestead Inn or weekly blowouts at Frederic Fekkai, but simply getting a paycheck.

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