Roselle man, 65, heading to Afghanistan for work

In his 40-year career as an electrician, Ken Rowe always found work, one way or another.

He often was lucky to find jobs close to his Roselle home. In the early '80s, earning a paycheck meant temporarily moving as far as Arizona with his family.

But the economy and personal hardship hit Rowe's family especially hard three years ago. First, his wife, Linda, experienced a health crisis that left her needing daily home care.

Then Rowe was laid off from his position as an electrical inspector with a Yorkville-based company. He spent most of 2009 on unemployment along with his son, Loryn, who also lost his job as a fiber optics technician.

Today, things are brighter. The 65-year-old Rowe prepares for a job he landed late last year with Teng & Associates, a design and construction firm.

The catch? The retirement-age Rowe will be working in Afghanistan.

Some of Teng's projects are contracted through the U.S. military, and Rowe said it's a good opportunity.

“Imagine your boss pulling you aside, holding out your paycheck, telling you it will be your last, and you don't know if your money will take you through another year,” Rowe said. “You think you're still young and vibrant. But most companies have written us off at 50 years old.

“Still, you just don't give up.”

Jobs ‘trickling in'

On paper, unemployment is improving in the U.S.

State officials said the March unemployment rate dropped in every Illinois metropolitan area for a record seventh consecutive month.

That brought Illinois unemployment to 9.1 percent for March, meaning 582,100 people are unemployed and seeking work, although officials said not all are on unemployment rolls.

That mirrored the nationwide rate of 9.2 percent.

Those figures were far different in early 2007 before the recession hit. In March of that year, 309,425 Illinoisans were unemployed, or 4.7 percent.

Sue Clark, director of workNet DuPage. said it's true more people employers are posting jobs, but “they are still trickling in.”

“Some of them are coming back, but it's not a boom,” she said.

Rowe agrees. Although the recession officially ended in June 2009, he said much of his former work in Yorkville was tied to a housing market that still hasn't recovered.

“It was stable, because you had eight subdivisions going up at one time, and they were putting up houses like mushrooms coming up out of the ground,” he said. “But by 2008, we were going into the downturn, and we probably had only six hours of work each day. Then the housing market took a death dive, so builders cut back on electricians, carpenters, cleaning crews.”

Rowe looked to his local union for work, which had typically come through for him. He said he applied with other companies that were mass hiring for local projects but was not chosen.

Nearly 7,000 job seekers like Rowe in DuPage County handled the rough economy by visiting the Lisle-based workNet last year, which is federally funded.

Clark said some visited sporadically to update resumes or work on interview skills, while about 1,000 came regularly to participate in programs like career transition training and a job club.

Greg Rivara, spokesman for the Illinois Department of Employment Security, said transitioning skill sets is key to navigating the effects of the recession. That would allow an electrician — a profession the U.S. Department of Labor said earned a median income of $46,425 in 2008 — to keep a similar paycheck instead of taking a more easily available minimum-wage job.

“A lot of people think of themselves as being a good electrician, plumber or carpenter, rather than being good at the skills that make them good at those jobs and seeing how they can translate,” Rivara said.

For Rowe, the local discouragement in his longtime profession took a toll, so his ears perked up when he ran into a colleague who was home from an electrician job in Afghanistan.

After that, Rowe armed himself with a binder filled with the diploma he earned from McHenry County College in 2009, certifications from International Association of Electrical Inspectors, the Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Union 701 and other professional groups, then started searching for work overseas.

More good years left

Afghanistan doesn't make Rowe especially nervous, given that he served for two years in the military during the Vietnam War.

But the preparation for Afghanistan takes months, and he is still waiting to see if he has gained final clearance. Rowe has been taking physical exams and receiving immunizations. He has completed online training modules that explore such topics as the history of Afghanistan, safety and interacting with U.S. military because he and his colleagues will secure electrical work on military bases — and they will call those bases home, too, he said.

“My compadre said every once in a while they get rockets, mortars and hand grenades,” Rowe said. “Even though you're on a big military base, there's still an element of danger.”

Although Rowe's friend works for another company, Teng's current job postings for electricians in Afghanistan offer a 35 percent “danger pay” on top of base salary, plus other benefits.

While he is gone, Rowe and his wife agreed their son will care for her. And if Loryn secures a local job, the family plans to hire a home nurse for the hours Linda needs care. The family declined to discuss the nature of her illness.

Rowe is unsure how long he will be away; Teng's Internet job listings said assignments run four to 16 months. He said his age doesn't discourage him because he feels he has “four or five more good years in him” and should utilize that in this economy.

“Just because you're 65 doesn't mean you are going to sit down and look out of a window for the rest of your life,” he said.

Work: Job could last from 4 to 16 months