Jerry King is no mathematician, but during the past year, numbers have defined his life, giving him reasons to fret and fight.

3: Number of years at his last job before he was laid off

14: Number of months he has been looking for a new job

2: Number of years since his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer

250: Number of people at his last job interview

54,000: Number of jobs cut in California this year

"I'm looking for anything. I just need to make a living," said the former Beck Properties home warranty representative.

This Labor Day, the 54-year-old King is more than another number boosting the state's unemployment rate. He is a hard- working Hughson man whose family depends on him and worries about him as he dives every day into an unemployment abyss hoping to come up with a job offer -- just one.

"All I do is worry," said King's wife, Debra, 54. "I feel so bad for him because Jerry is a worker. He loves to work. And he's had a lot of schooling and he knows so much. He's just not getting a job. It's just a bad situation we're in.

"He says, 'It's OK, Deb, I'm going to get this job.' And they don't even call him."

King's sense of desperation for a job is compounded by his wife's illness and urgent need for medical insurance. She has been cancer-free since her surgery more than two years ago, but found a new lump last month. It will be one more week before a doctor will examine it.

The cancer society has helped the Kings afford some of her medication and medical care, but that assistance will end soon.

The Kings' health care coverage, which paid all of Debra King's $138,000 lumpectomy bill, ran out a year ago. They count themselves lucky to have had it when they did.

About 24 percent of Californians are uninsured. For every percentage point California's unemployment rate rises, about 150,000 people lose their health insurance, according to a Kaiser Permanente study.

Even when others around him were laid off, King hoped he would be unscathed.

"Our company held on to people for as long as they could and laid me off last. By the time I was on the job market, everyone was already looking," he said while standing in line at a job fair last week waiting to hear about openings at E.&J. Gallo Winery. "First, I was looking for the same pay. Now, I'm looking for anything. I just need to make a living."

When this decade's employment peaked in 2005 while the economy was booming, workers felt secure in their jobs even though their take-home pay remained flat.

As people such as King toiled every day throughout the construction boom, wages barely kept up with inflation, according to economists with the University of California at Berkeley Institute for Research on Labor & Employment.

Despite increased worker productivity since the 2001 recession, workers' wealth has not increased, Berkeley economist Sylvia Allegretto said. But they are feeling the economic bust.

The Northern San Joaquin Valley's jobless rate hit 11.3 percent last month; its residents lost 3,000 homes to foreclosure. Economists say the housing market, which pulled the state out of the 2001 recession, since has collapsed, sending a ripple effect through the economy and forcing layoffs.

"The labor market has hit more than a rough patch as job loss has occurred in each month of this year," Allegretto said.

While the economic expansion after the 1991-92 recession was shared across income levels, the "most recent economic growth has flowed to those at the top and has done little for hardworking, productive, average workers," Allegretto said.

In general, the country's top third of wage earners increased their wealth while everyone else's wealth remained stagnant or declined, Berkeley researcher Dave Graham-Squire said.

From where he stands today, King will tell you something is better than nothing.

"I worked hard to get where I was and I'm not ready to retire," he said. "I've always worked. Sitting at home drives me nuts."

Now, King spends his mornings searching newspaper want-ads online and his afternoons distributing his résumé or doing side jobs for neighbors.

"At this point, I'd take anything. I know there's something out there," he said.