There are few better cures for a feeling of optimism about the US economy than stepping into the Hot Stylz hair salon, in a strip mall on the outskirts of Indianapolis. The hair salon – which has a mainly black clientele – is in a state, Indiana, where unemployment is just 4.6 per cent – better than the national average of 4.9 per cent. But the men running clippers through customers’ hair are worried about their clients’ futures – and their own.
“Myself personally, I do a lot of factory work,” one of the barbers, Robert Curlin, says. “It’s very difficult to get into the kind of work where you earn [good] money and . . . don’t have to go through temporary service contracts.”
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