{"id":7549,"date":"2012-05-23T14:30:53","date_gmt":"2012-05-23T20:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/?p=7549"},"modified":"2013-07-18T14:13:01","modified_gmt":"2013-07-18T20:13:01","slug":"for-one-laid-off-construction-worker-school-was-the-only-option","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2012\/05\/23\/for-one-laid-off-construction-worker-school-was-the-only-option\/","title":{"rendered":"For One Laid-Off Construction Worker, School Was The Only Option"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Emilie Ritter Saunders \/ StateImpact<\/p>

Jesse Guyett, 32, works part time at Boise State Public Radio as an operator technician.<\/p><\/div>\n

Jesse Guyett fits unwillingly into a crumby statistic.\u00a0 He is one of about 20,000 Idahoans laid off from a construction job<\/a> since the economy tanked after 2007.\u00a0 Idaho Department of Labor data show<\/a> about 45 percent of the state’s construction jobs have been cut since 2007.<\/p>\n

Guyett is a journeyman electrician. He went to school for four years, then apprenticed for five <\/del>to get that certification.\u00a0 “I became a journeyman electrician in the fall of 2008 and in the spring of 2009, in March, I ended up getting laid off from my job,” Guyett says.\u00a0<\/del>He was making good money, about $16.75 an hour plus benefits.\u00a0 “Unfortunately, we specialized in specialty homes, multimillion dollar homes,” Guyett says, “and those were the first to go when the economy tanked.” <\/p>\n

Within a month of getting his pink slip, Guyett moved from Potlatch to Boise, enrolled at Boise State University and landed a job as a student employee at Boise State Public Radio.\u00a0 “It wasn\u2019t going to be a quick turnaround in a year and all would be hunky-dory,” Guyett says.\u00a0 “So I needed to find something to do, to kill four or five years, or for as long as it took to recover.”<\/p>\n

Now, 32 years old, married and parenting three step-children, Guyett is on the path to becoming an electrical engineer.\u00a0 He<\/del> works 30 hours a week for minimum wage, and takes about 12 credits a semester.\u00a0 He’d like to end up as an engineer at a radio or television station, or running his own business as a master electrician.<\/p>\n

Because of family commitments, Guyett isn’t in a position to leave Idaho to look for different work opportunities.\u00a0 And he’s never really been interested in working a desk job, he was drawn to working construction.\u00a0 “I like building things. I like being out in the weather,” Guyett says.\u00a0 “Even in the middle of winter it was a fun job to have. You\u2019re not sitting at a desk. You\u2019re active all day long. You can listen to music as loud as you want to.”<\/p>\n

Still, Guyett often checks construction job listings to see what’s out there.\u00a0 The housing market <\/a>is making a turn toward recovery in Idaho, but Guyett says it’s still an employers market.\u00a0 “They can find workers for dirt cheap.\u00a0 I went for an interview and the gentlemen told me he\u2019d only pay $11 an hour to do track homes all day.\u00a0 And that\u2019s just not what I got into it for.\u00a0 I have certain values I\u2019ve got to hold myself to,” says Guyett.<\/p>\n

Guyett isn’t sure if he’s electrical engineering degree will pay off.\u00a0 If nothing else, Guyett says it’s bought him some time until Idaho’s economy makes a full come-back.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jesse Guyett fits unwillingly into a crumby statistic.\u00a0 He is one of about 20,000 Idahoans laid off from a construction job since the economy tanked after 2007.\u00a0 Idaho Department of Labor data show about 45 percent of the state’s construction jobs have been cut since 2007. Guyett is a journeyman electrician. He went to school […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":7551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[57,106,133],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7549"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7549"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17916,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7549\/revisions\/17916"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}