[Great article. There was also an excellent piece in the NY Times today (below) about the growing sense of alienation being experienced by middle-aged white-collar New Yorkers due to prolonged economic weakness. I can personally certify that long-term unemployment is both a consciousness-raising and ego-razing experience.]
White-Collar Layoffs, Downsized Dreams
By ANTHONY DePALMA
Besides the obvious impact on wallets and pocketbooks, the prolonged economic downturn is leaving a profound and potentially long-lasting psychological imprint on a generation of midcareer professionals who have until now known little but success in the world of work.
Years of progressively better jobs and higher salaries, for many solidly in the six figures, primed their expectations and shaped their lives. Now many of these professionals — a broad range of college-educated managers, administrators and midlevel executives — have been out of work for a year or longer, especially in the hard-hit worlds of finance, communications and information technology that are concentrated in the New York area. ...
In the last two years, the rate of increase of unemployment among professionals has risen proportionately more than for the blue-collar workers, who are traditionally hit hardest in a recession.
Having lost their jobs in part because the technology bubble burst, many professionals have had a harder time than most blue-collar workers finding new ones. The number of professionals out of work for more than six months has more than doubled in the last year, and on average they are going jobless longer than both crafts workers and laborers.
Recent polls show that the optimism and confidence that were a notable feature of this slump a year ago have started to wane.
"Their sense of security has been shaken," said Katherine S. Newman, Malcolm Wiener professor of urban studies at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. "People will survive, but they won't generally come back to the standard of living they once enjoyed. For most of them, it means deferring a lot of dreams, and compromising aspects of life that are very precious to them." ...
Sociologists are beginning to consider the long-term effects this prolonged downturn may have on this generation of workers and the next.
"These people don't ever recover the sense of complete confidence that the world is as it appears," said Professor Newman of Harvard. "In some way, they are always worried that the other shoe is going to drop tomorrow. It's a feeling that they transmit to their kids, and this can have ramifications through the generations."
Bernadette T. Lowthert, 40, already believes that these times have become the equivalent for her of what the Depression was for previous generations.
"You know there's going to be a crisis in your lifetime," said Ms. Lowthert, who was laid off in July 2001 from an Internet start-up that she joined after having spent 13 years as a microbiologist and project director with a large pharmaceutical company. "It was the Depression for my parents. This is it for us now."
She cannot afford to have her sister, who is mentally disabled, live with her, as she had planned. She has delayed the renovation of the bathroom in her New York City apartment. She still goes out to dinner every once in a while, but she orders just an appetizer.
Early last month she began a new job, selling laboratory services to doctors. She said that it was a setback, professionally speaking, and entailed a big cut in salary.
Still, it is a job, and despite the hardship of the last 17 months, Ms. Lowthert said she remained essentially optimistic, though not the same as before.
"This really tests you and tests your ego," she said. "Now it just doesn't feel right to look too far ahead. It doesn't make sense."
<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/05/nyregion/05DREA.html?pagewanted=1>
Carl
_________________________________________________________________ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail