“We specifically tell people that’s the case,” Loos says. “It’s not something anybody should be surprised about.”

But it happens every now and then.

In both 2005 and 2009 when there were teacher layoffs in the St. Louis Archdiocese, the Post-Dispatch interviewed former employees who said they were surprised to not have access to unemployment benefits.

“There’s the law, and then there’s what’s morally correct, and in the church that’s always a problem,” said Bob Fehey, 66, of Fenton, after losing his job in 2009.

Loos said then, and repeated this week, that the decision balances out the need to provide other benefits and be good stewards of donors’ funds.

“It comes down to an economic decision,” he said. “If magically I had another quarter of a million dollars, there would be a clamor for how to best invest that money.”

So the unemployed do without any safety net to help them as they begin their next job search.

That didn’t sit well with the person I spoke to who is doing some odd jobs to make ends meet.