When he tells his unemployment story, David Fisher — like so many others — begins on Sept. 11, 2001.

“When 9/11 struck, I was listening to music on NPR, adjusting some parts on a machine, and I heard that the first plane had hit, and then I heard that the second plane had hit," Fisher said.

He knew then it was terrorism, and that need for security would increase. “And I thought, God forgive me, this is going to be great for this company."

He couldn't have been more wrong. Instead, customers cut off their orders to reconsider their security options. If Cybermotion Inc., an autonomous-robotics firm, could have held on just a bit longer, this story might be entirely different. But it didn't, and he was laid off in January 2002 when the company ceased production.

Fisher, an experienced mechanical designer who lives in Roanoke, was optimistic at first about his chances of finding work in his field. But as the months and then years went by, he took a job at the Williamson Road ABC store to stave off serious financial trouble for him and his wife, who is an accountant.

He is not alone. Economists say that there may be as many as 27,000 people in a 60-mile radius of Roanoke who are underemployed, which means they are working in jobs that don't match their experience and education. That's out of a labor force of more than 340,000.

Underemployment is a slippery measure. But getting a grip on it could be the Rosetta stone for those who are balancing positive local economic indicators with the threat of stagnating growth and loss of professional-caliber jobs.

On one hand, economic developers sell the underemployed work force as an untapped resource for potential employers who might worry that Roanoke's low unemployment rate suggests a small pool of workers. Area residents struggling to find work in their lifelong profession wonder, too, how many others are in the same boat. For them, underemployment takes a more personal toll.

"If we had a really good measure of how the economy was performing, it would include underemployment," said Nicolaus Tideman, professor of economics at Virginia Tech. "I think everyone accepts that we don't measure underemployment very well."

The statistics

Most measures indicate that between 7 percent and 9 percent of the work force qualifies as underemployed, which means there may be thousands of workers who, like Fisher, have professional skills marketable to potential employers coming to the area. But for the most part, they are invisible in the conventional statistics used to describe an area.

The unemployment rate for the Roanoke Metropolitan Statistical Area registers at a sunny 3.1 percent. The number doesn't make sense to professionals who work far below their skill level after long periods of unemployment, nor does it do much to reassure potential employers that people would be lining up to work for their company.

“One of the concerns in the Roanoke Valley is that we have low unemployment," said Robert Sandel, president of Virginia Western Community College. "I think what we want to do in the Roanoke Valley is get a real determination of [the underemployed]. We need to do an up-to-date study that will give us a better picture. We want to get a handle on this figure as an attractor for potential industry."

But is underemployment a real problem, or just a tool used by economic developers to counter-balance a low unemployment rate?

Bruce Johannessen, manager of the Virginia Employment Commission's Workforce Center on Valley View Boulevard, said anecdotal evidence suggests that underemployment is a legitimate concern.

“Over one-half of people coming through our doors right now are employed," Johannessen said. "It would suggest a problem with underemployment. If you don't have enough of a wage to cover your basic expenses and health insurance . . . There are too many people who are trying to find a decent job."

People like Doloris Vest, Fisher and his former colleague Ken Kennedy feel the sting sharply.

They used to worry more about getting stock options than getting insurance benefits. Where a health crisis would once have dealt a recoverable blow to their comfortable lives, it could now push them over the brink of financial ruin. Middle-aged professionals with families, mortgages and retirement savings accounts suddenly found themselves feeling more like teenagers: moving back home, borrowing money from their parents, taking low-wage service jobs just to pay the rent.

Vest, a Salem resident who was laid off from three different jobs starting in 2000, finally took a part-time position as an office coordinator, and is concerned that the health benefits from her last job will run out soon. Vest is an energetic and accomplished marketing director, but the sequence of layoffs has taken its toll on her natural optimism.

“I understand what they did. From a business perspective, it makes sense to me," she said. "From a personal perspective, it's a little more difficult."

Vest said it's been an adjustment to go from bringing in $2 million in revenue to answering phones and taking messages at, ironically, the Western Virginia Workforce Development Board office in Roanoke.

She knows it could have been much worse. She got a severance package from all her jobs and letters of recommendation from her supervisors. And her sons, 15 and 17 years old, are nearly grown.

“The third time, it was like, all right, enough is enough," she said. "That was the hardest time. I'd lost my optimism."

Borrowing money from her parents, even just the smallest amount that was always paid back, was tough.

"I knew they would enjoy the opportunity to help me," Vest said. "But they had taught me to be responsible and to take care of myself."

Ken Kennedy was forced to take it a step further. Once the general manager at Cybermotion, Kennedy took a job as a customer service representative for Sprint PCS in Charlotte last September. At one point, he had to move back to his native Augusta, Ga., to live with his parents, though that "didn't work out." The job search there didn't, either.

"It turned out Augusta was pretty dead, even worse than Roanoke," Kennedy said.

While he declined to give specific salary figures, Kennedy said in his current job he is making about 30 percent of what he made at Cybermotion. His wife also decided to go back to work, doing private child care. He continues to look for engineering work, and thinks Charlotte, where his sons live, is his best bet.

"Every day part of me says, gosh, I'm wasting my time here," Kennedy said. "Even at Sprint I see things that I could do better. It's a little frustrating, a little demeaning."

Moving from Roanoke "was a tough decision because my family and I had lived in Roanoke since 1982," Kennedy said. "It was an emotional time for us. We had woven ourselves into the community. We really liked Roanoke, the town, its location, the culture."

The ‘quality of life’

Kennedy is certainly not alone in not wanting to leave the valley. In fact, the "quality of life" — low crime, bearable traffic, beautiful scenery — may be one of the things playing a role in underemployment.

Although most have no choice but to take any job to make car payments and buy groceries, some think the quality of life in Roanoke may actually contribute to stagnant economic growth.

Settling for a job, said Lucas LaRocca, a counselor for the Displaced Worker Program, in the long term hurts the area economy.

“We want economic growth, but I don't know if we are going to get it." When smart, skilled, well-educated people take jobs as cashiers, that hurts economic development, he said.

The quality of life in Roanoke, however, is usually touted as one of the top attractors for new economic growth. But LaRocca said people who already live here are key players as well.

"What we try to tell these people is, 'Don't limit yourselves. Don't abandon what you want to do,’ ” LaRocca said. "You can improve the economy of the area if you do what you really want to do."

Fisher, one of LaRocca's clients, is wont to agree with him, and has decided that designing machines, tools and equipment is still a passion worth pursuing.

“These are the things that I do, that I excel in, that I love," he said. At the same time, he realizes that the possibility of working at a company he loved like Cybermotion is not very bright.

“I was able to do things at Cybermotion that I will probably never have the opportunity to do again," Fisher said. "Designing robots! That's the future."

Doloris Vest's outlook is a bit different. Though she loved what she did, and even applied for jobs as far away as Asheville and Bristol, Vest is beginning to think she may never get another job in marketing.

After this last layoff, "I started asking myself, is it time to change careers? Is it time to do something different?"

Bruce Wood, executive director of the Western Virginia Workforce Development Board, acknowledges that there may be industries in Roanoke that will be difficult to break back into.

"If I have a medical background, there are a lot of great opportunities," Wood said. "If I have a certain kind of engineering degree, it may be different."

There's no doubt the job market has been lean. Both Fisher, 49, and Kennedy, 57, have sent out hundreds of fruitless applications over the last two and a half years. Sometimes, they said, the constant hunting makes them blink their eyes and shake their heads and wonder if they are experiencing age discrimination.

"It's one of the suspicions of the long unemployed," Fisher said.

Kennedy, who had invested 90 percent of his retirement savings in Cybermotion, said he can understand why prospective employers look at his college graduation date with concern.

"I can't say specifically that there's age discrimination, but I'm applying for jobs that I would have gotten before," he said. "I can't say I wouldn't have looked at it the same way if I was the one doing the hiring."

At the same time, "it took me by surprise. I had always felt like you stood on the merits of what you can do, the skills that you have . . . It takes some of the fight out of you, demoralizes you. At the same time, I think it makes me try a little harder."

Still, Kennedy thinks the next best thing could be right around the corner. He gets more responses to his inquiries now, keeps up with every positive tidbit of news about the financial markets.

When he was first starting to look for a job, Fisher said he was "fairly optimistic. I'm still fairly optimistic. In the last few months, I've not only seen more [job] postings but I see the NASDAQ has gone up. I feel like the economy's a bit better . . . in the store, I see more people are getting jobs."

And though he could probably focus his efforts toward advancing at the ABC store, he keeps the faith that the right opportunity will eventually present itself through the networking and job hunting. "I know my dream job is still out there."