On this morning, there is no chit-chat. None of the fifteen sitting in rows on uncomfortable-looking chairs asks his neighbor, "So what brings you here?"

In part, it's because everybody knows the story. The economy went south. The company's income dropped. Workers were let go and now sustenance comes from the unemployment office, where a video spells out its services.

Among those looking for work this morning is Wendy Peck. Finding nothing yet, she's on her way out the door. At sixty, she had hoped to retire in six or seven years from her job as an accountant at a real estate firm. As an accountant, she was keenly aware that things weren't going well. When she was laid off last October, she was angry.

"They asked me to stay for two weeks to teach someone else my job. And that was actually kind of embarrassing. I stuck it out because I needed the money."

Since then Peck has been looking for a new job. She says she's been on 15 interviews that amounted to nothing. She had been earning $17 an hour as a full-time employee. She started her job search asking for $15.

"But now I'm getting a little desperate," she says, "and $12 an hour is looking a little better. But I think $10 is probably the going rate."

If nobody hires her, Peck says she'll continue to collect unemployment. Waiting in the front row of seats nearby is Cari Van Winkle. She too worked in real estate, managing rental properties. She says she took notice when fewer people were renting homes on the coast. So did her employer. She was laid off a few weeks ago.

"It's scary," she says. "I mean, you can't find a job. Nobody's hiring right now. And so, I have a six month old at home and my concern is him. I do whatever I can do to help, help support my family."

She pays eleven-hundred dollars a month for her house in Sunset Beach. Her husband does contract work, making home repairs. She paid for his and her son's health insurance, which costs hundreds. She says she doesn't even want to think about what would happen if her husband couldn't find work.

"You don't know what's going to happen from one day to the next," she says. "So it's kind of . . . it's hard. We just pray that things turn around and get better."

Supply resident Denise Ouellette agrees. "Hope and a prayer, baby, that's the only way you get through," she says. "Hope and a prayer."

She too sits in the front row of seats at the ESC. She lost her job selling jewelry at a Brunswick County store more than a year ago. She went back to school to get an associate's degree in business, but so far she's been unable to find work. Her husband, a mechanic, paid the bills until an injury left him out of work. Now they're several months behind on the mortgage payments.

"From what I'm understanding, if I don't have $5000 to the mortgage company by the 17th of March, they'll take my house," she says.

She and her husband are running out of money, and she says it breaks her heart to hear her six year old son talk about it.

"Like, he asked his dad the other day, Daddy, are we going to have to move?' And we were like, No, why would you say that?' He said, Well, you can't pay the bills.' He said, I don't want to have to move, Daddy. Where are we going to go and what are we going to do with our doggies?'"

But the hard times have brought a surprising change for Ouellette and her husband. When he was in the military and she was working, they easily paid the bills. But they used to fight a lot. That's not so these days.

"We have a negative $28 in one bank account and a positive $3 in another. And we're laughing our tails off. We're having more fun broke and getting along better broke. And now we laugh. There's nothing to do but laugh."

The way she explains it: she can only cry so much.

Ouellette cuts her comments short when her name is called. She passes the audience of fellow job-hunters and disappears behind the gray cubicle walls, seeking some tangible assistance to accompany her hopes and prayers.

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