With the new unemployment numbers rising in South Carolina, many unemployed people may not know where to turn.
James Kyriakos used to be in that boat.
“I was a personal trainer,” Kyriakos said. “Day in and day out I would train individuals, young and old.”
But by late August Kyriakos noticed the economy starting to affect his business.
"Last thing you know I'm going down to three or four clients a week instead of ten or fifteen,” he said. “Then the money’s just not there anymore. So you get scared.”
“You've got to pay the bills,” he said. “And you've got to take care of yourself, and I really didn't know what to do."
By September Kyriakos was unemployed.
“[Being unemployed] is almost like waking up in the morning and not having anything to eat to eat,” Kyriakos said. “You pack your pantry full of food and over the course of a week it wears down and that's kind of like what this was."
When Kyriakos lost his job as a personal trainer he thought all was lost.
Then he came by the Myrtle Beach Workforce Center.
They were able to help him shape up his resume online, and Kyriakos said, things started to look up from there.
“What they did is they actually helped me set up something with a company called Palmetto Alarm," Kyriakos said.
Now Kyriakos sells alarm systems to residents and businesses.
The Workforce Center has many resources to help people who are jobless get back on their feet.
“We have complete internet service, we have resume software,” said Tony Johnson, Placement Supervisor at the Workforce Center. “For folks who are trying to sharpen up on their typing skills, we also have a typing tutorial that they can do, and of course we have the unemployment insurance that they can use while they're using these other tools," he said.
Kryiakos said he hopes the center can be a help to everyone who is unemployed.
“I hope everybody else will take the time out to file their claims, be persistent, be looking for a job, and just keep your head up because in the long run everything will work itself out," he said.
A man's determination landed him a job in this struggling economy.
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