by Diane Vacca
After working for eight and a half years at IBM, Nancy Ikeda, 55, lost her job 13 months ago. She had lived in Binghamton, N.Y., since her daughters were in high school, but after spending most of the year looking in vain for another job, Ikeda decided she couldn’t stay any longer.
“There’s just nothing” in Binghamton, she says, because the major employers aren’t hiring. Ikeda had watched people being laid off at IBM during the time she worked there. “They sent the entire department overseas,” she says, “and finally got to me.” The company’s workforce was reduced from over 4,000 in 2002 to 1,300 when Ikeda lost her job in February of 2009. “Lockheed Martin laid off a quarter of their people, and SUNY Binghamton had a hiring freeze.”
