Part Time

Seven months of unemployment after losing his job with Baltimore County in the layoffs of 1993 make Michael J. Smith happy to be back in county employ.But it's a heavily qualified joy.Before returning to the county payroll in October, the 43-year-old mechanical engineer had to use all of his retirement savings to survive. And he earns $14,000 a year less -- a 30 percent pay cut -- in his less-skilled job reviewing building plans for fire safety.Part-time consulting work helped him survive, he said, but the reality of starting over is made clear with every paycheck.

Richard Siegel is not among the unemployed. Between running a charity, writing songs and doing stand-up comedy, he's got gigs aplenty. He's just making about half of what he once did. Despite the gradually improving job market, millions of Americans are earning less. They are the jobless — but also those who can only get part-time work, those who have landed new jobs with lower salaries than what they once earned and others simply getting smaller paychecks in the jobs they've had all along.

In today's hotly competitive workplace, people who take even a short time off from the corporate world can expect to pay a high price. And that's bad news if you want a break for child care, are having trouble finding a new job after a layoff, or need to relocate with your spouse.Take the case of a reader from the New York suburbs who gave up a job in San Francisco last summer when his wife accepted a position on the East Coast. "Scott" had the financial luxury of taking the fall off, but since he started job-hunting after New Year's, he's struck out."

Despite an abundance of "help wanted" signs on the fast-food restaurants and in shopping centers for service workers, students looking for a good summer job this year will find it tougher than ever."

In case you hadn't heard, it is Screen-Free Week . No computers. No televisions. No hand-held devices. (All of this comes with one caveat: your kids can use "screens" to do homework. It isn't like you have to break out the old encyclopedias or go to the public library or anything drastic like that.) To all of you are participating this week, I say: "Go for it!" I won't invite your kids over and show them a cool new video on YouTube or ask if they want to see Orioles' games highlights.

NAFTA would drive U.S. jobs into MexicoWith all the debate concerning whether the North American Free Trade Agreement will create American jobs or cause our jobs to be exported, a basic question for American workers is: What kind of jobs will be lost, and what kind will be created?I have heard that the new jobs will be higher-wage, skilled positions. While the economic growth projected by NAFTA supporters may create such jobs, it's hard to believe that the U.S. would experience a net gain in total jobs created.

With hands that jut at right angles from his arms and mild mental retardation, Joe Sanderson was assigned the most menial of tasks when he started his first paying job this spring at a nature center run by the Anne Arundel County schools. It was all anyone thought he could handle. But then the determined 19-year-old surprised his boss, his job counselor and even his social worker. Within weeks, he had moved from filling salt shakers to guiding a cafeteria full of schoolchildren through lunch.

On his fourth cigarette of the morning, on his way to the employment section of the newspaper, the faceless man sees the story about Parks Sausage closing its doors. Wonderful: 219 brand new people looking for work, 219 more competitors for a job he's been unsuccessfully seeking for nearly two months now.On the kitchen table is a sheet of paper covered with telephone numbers, a dozen numbers, 25 numbers, wait a minute while he counts -- it's about 40 phone calls to companies this week and not a glimmer of an offer.

MILWAUKEE, Wis. - Douglas Konecny loved everything about manufacturing. He loved the roar of the machines and the hum of the factory walls. The vibrations. The smells. Even the feel of the fans blowing against his damp skin on midsummer days when it was 10 degrees hotter inside the seven-story building than outside. He could tell when things were going right and when they were going wrong. Even when he wasn't there. "You actually feel it like your own blood pumping," Konecny, 49, says of the work that gave him satisfaction and a comfortable, middle-class life for nearly 30 years.

Two rejection letters arrived on a recent Tuesday afternoon at Jerry Beard's house in Timonium -- making it three for the week.The electrical engineer read them with resignation, took his place at his computer, and scrolled by rote through dozens of job-search files. Then he retreated to the couch, laid his head in his wife's lap, and stared blankly at the television."I had expectations that I would be working by now," said Mr. Beard, 38, who had worked at Westinghouse for more than nine years.