She worked hard through high school and got accepted to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University where she majored in journalism. And on December 13, 2003, she became the first person in her family to graduate from college.

With her degree in hand, Jones began working as a journalist, first at the Jackson Sun in Tennessee, then for the past five years at a group of community papers owned by the News & Record in Greensboro, NC. But with the newspaper industry on shaky financial ground, her paper began letting people go in 2007. Then a short time later it laid more people off. The company that owned the News & Record, Landmark, then offered a buyout to dozens of its employees. And finally, came a third layoff. Jones was able to survive all of that and she felt lucky, but she was on the edge thinking she too may be laid off.

Although her layoff didn’t come as a surprise, that didn’t make the news any less devastating.

Jones is being proactive about her unemployment. She’s already got the paperwork filed and she’s moving in with her father to save money. It’s a big adjustment from her carefree, independent life, but right now she has to think about survival and her future. What will she do next? When will she find a new job? But what’s most urgent to her right now is her health.

While she’s trying to remain optimistic about the future, the fact that black women are losing more jobs than they are gaining is making it hard for her to do so.