Two years ago Jasmine Radloff, hands on hips, made an announcement. “I know why I’ve been bitchy lately.” Joe Jagodzinski looked up from his video game. She had been. “I’m pregnant.”

Pivot. Stomp. Slam. Lock. Radloff flopped down on the toilet and buried her face in her hands. She knew his reaction was going to be rotten, and she’d had enough rotten. Everything was rotten. Socks were on the bathroom floor. Toothpaste and whiskers coated the sink. His business had just gone belly up and she’d been laid off. Neither could find a job.

In the train wreck that was their life, how could they have another accident this big? The 21-year-old and her 24-year-old partner would be starting a family as part of this recession’s hardest-hit demographic. Although people ages 16 to 24 make up just 13 percent of the labor force, they represent 26 percent of the unemployed, according to a May study by the Joint Economic Committee of Congress. The youth unemployment rate is 19.6 percent, the highest for any age group since the government began keeping track in 1947. Youth unemployment has been consistently high throughout the downturn. A July Gallup poll reports 1 in 3 young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 are jobless or underemployed.

Jagodzinski knocked lightly. She opened the door and tears were streaming down his face. She had never seen him cry. He wrapped her up and bawled tears of joy. “But I hate kids,” she remembers thinking.

Two years later she qualifies that. Fourteen-month-old Vaeden Liam Radloff pulls on the hair that Mom just styled for a part-time job interview. Radloff sniffs and detects diaper change No. 3 of the day. She wrinkles her nose, kisses her baby’s forehead and hands him off to Dad. “I hate all kids but this one,” she says.

They are living in about 500 square feet, much of it in a converted garage that has not been drywalled. Exposed wiring snakes around the walls, but the rent is cheap, $450 a month.

For two years neither was able to find regular work. But Radloff recently got a part-time job cleaning animal cages at the SPCA in Largo. It pays $7.50 an hour. If she’s lucky she can get 30 hours a week. Jagodzinski’s last job nibble was three months ago. They are living mostly off unemployment and whatever they own that will sell on Craigslist. Up next is their fish tank.

He has always been the guy who could fix things. When he was 16 he taught himself how to install a car stereo system. Within a few years he opened his own shop, Catastrophic Audio. Between making cars thump and working with his dad’s charter fishing business he was making a good living. In 2007 both the charter fishing and the thump-thump business dried up. He and his father argued over money, then stopped speaking. The building owners put a padlock on the audio shop and sold the remaining woofers, tweeters, kickers and bass slammers to pay what he owed on the lease.

Vaeden’s cry turns to a scream. Jagodzinski changes his diaper, swoops him up, spins him around and plops him onto the couch. His blue eyes brighten. His Disney laugh fills the room.

It feels good to be able to fix something.

There are 720,000 undocumented workers in Florida. Source: U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The Mexican locks eyes with the Border Patrol agent. Crammed in the car with him are four other illegal immigrants. Their smuggler is cuffed and on his knees in the grass along Interstate 75 just north of Tampa.

“Come with me to the back of the car,” the agent commands each passenger in Spanish. Everardo Lemus hesitates. He struggles to translate the words into Nahuatl, his native language. It is the language of both the once-majestic Aztec empire and his impoverished family in Cuautempan, Mexico. His village consists of a few dozen homes six hours’ walking distance from the nearest telephone. His eyes water. He bites his lip.

Two years ago, as an 18-year-old, Lemus stared into the United States from the banks of the Rio Grande outside Laredo, Texas. Behind him, childhood. In front of him, a four-day desert crossing into a country where he risks arrest to pick vegetables, a place that both exploits and despises him. The plan was to be here about five years. Just long enough to save the $6,000 he needs to build a concrete house, no bigger than 1,000 square feet, on a little plot of land to farm back home.

Maria Elena would marry him either way. She doesn’t care that a wooden home won’t keep out the cold. That without a little land, her husband will spend his life working someone else’s field for less than a dollar a day. She knows there will be times when there is food, and times when there isn’t. That her children’s pants will be patched and repatched as they pass from father to son to younger brother to youngest brother. She doesn’t care that asking for charity stings.

But Lemus does.

“Yes, sir,” he says, and takes his first steps toward home.

Fern White’s 10-month old granddaughter pounds on the bird cage, sending the parakeet into a squawking frenzy. She prays for patience. Bolts of pain shoot from her arthritic knees as she gets up to look for the baby bottle. She prays for relief. Her granddaughter giggles, grabs the computer mouse and tugs. She prays it doesn’t break. If it breaks, she can’t replace it. And without it, she can’t look for a job from home while watching the baby. ... Read more

ONE IN THREE BIRTHS IN HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY IS TO A HISPANIC MOTHER.

Hispanic births 2008: Hernando 157; Hillsborough 5623; Pasco 874; Pinellas 1215 ... Read more