Typical "Job Getting" Story - ATLANTA JOURNAL CONSTITUTION
Long job searches grow more common
By MICHAEL E. KANELL
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 02/12/04
A decade ago, Roger Labunski assumed he would continue pulling in $100,000 or better each year. Lately he has been lowering his sights — a lot.
He has been out of work for 18 months. He gave up his home in a divorce, sold many possessions, borrowed money from relatives and still ended up filing for bankruptcy. He now lives in a rental loft near Decatur.
"I have given up on a full-time job," Labunski said. "I have to reinvent myself."
In the past three years, unemployment has jumped from 5.7 million to 8.3 million. Some jobless people, especially during hard times, go many months searching for work — but that group has rarely been so large for so long.
About 650,000 of the jobless in 2000 were out of work six months or longer. Now, about 1.9 million Americans — 23 percent of the jobless — have been unemployed for more than six months. Most lost their jobless benefits after 26 weeks; some had a 13-week extension.
And the fastest-growing part of that group are people like Labunski: educated, skilled and experienced.
The better-educated are still a minority among the ranks of the long-term jobless. But the number of those with at least a bachelor's degree has surged 299 percent in three years, while workers older than 45 now make up one-third of the long-term jobless, according to an Economic Policy Institute study that used data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Labunski had run some very large projects, mostly for telecommunications companies. Now, at 48, he fears being dismissed as overqualified.
Jobs like the one he lost are being advertised for about 60 percent of the pay he had. Still, he hasn't been able to land one. Now he's looking for contract work and is thinking about becoming "a life coach," offering his own hard-earned experience to others.
"The trick is to take skills and put them to work some other way," he said.
Change in trend
The trend away from age and experience became clear more than a year ago, according to the state Department of Labor. After waves of white-collar workers began to flood unemployment offices, the department set up a regular networking group. Participants pass along job leads and tips, names of contacts in companies and tricks for getting in the door.
About 25 people sat around U-shaped tables at the Department of Labor's Toco Hill office on Wednesday afternoon. They were white, black, male, female. Most were middle-aged.
About a third were newcomers, but a depressingly large proportion of the rest were anything but: Most have been jobless more than a half-year.
"People think that if you don't have a job, it's because you are not looking," said Athena Jones, 38, of Stone Mountain, who says she has done little else. Previously a human resources professional for a medical device company, Jones has been out of work for 18 months.
Downsizing hopes
The numbers testify to a market in which persistence, experience and skill are no guarantee of a job.
The people behind the data say the same thing: They jump on every job posting that looks reasonable. They send out hundreds of résumés. They call and call and call. They know the odds are against them; a crowd shows up for every hint of an opening.
"I have had one interview in six months," said networking and information systems manager David Deitch, 37, of Sandy Springs.
Laid off in July from Turner Broadcasting, Deitch cashed his final unemployment check last month.
"I consider myself lucky. I am single, and I put away a lot of money," he said. "I'm about to cash in $2,500 from my mutual funds and move it into savings. I'm doing this month by month. I'm pretty sure I can last through July before I have to dip into my home equity line."
He, too, is downsizing his hopes. Instead of corporate America, he is looking for a small business that needs just one person to manage its technology.
Many prior recessions brought inordinate pain to blue-collar America. And since 2000, manufacturing has again been hammered, tossing many workers into joblessness.
Yet many of the long-term jobless are both white-collar and manufacturing workers, said Andrew Stettner, policy analyst for the National Employment Law Project. "Some of these folks are management, or marketing or engineers. They are not always the people out on the shop floor."
Experienced professionals find it harder than others to get back on a payroll, despite an economy that is growing robustly — by virtually all measures, except for jobs.
In many sectors, customer demand remains too weak to justify hiring. Some companies use productivity to get more output without hiring. "Offshoring" lets them add workers — in other countries — with wages lower than they must pay in the United States.
Economic puzzle
Many economists, noting a dramatic slowdown in the pace of layoffs, are puzzled that job growth has been so lackluster. The U.S. economy has added just 366,000 since August, leaving American payrolls more than 2.3 million shy of where they were in early 2001.
Nationally, new jobless claims last week climbed to 363,000, pulling the four-week average up to 350,000. That's still below the recession level of 400,000 that claims repeatedly hit last summer.
The claims data in Georgia tell a contrary tale, Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond said Thursday.
During January, 70,271 laid-off workers filed first-time unemployment claims, a 19 percent increase from December. In metro Atlanta, claims were up 5,736, or 31 percent, from the previous month.
Even when jobs are added, the new jobs do not match the caliber of positions that evaporated during the past three years, argued Stettner. New slots are more likely to be lower-paid business services than higher-paid, white-collar positions.
Will that change? The long-term jobless wonder, as they revise résumés and expectations. A leap to a new career means starting further down the ladder. But avoiding that choice means eating up savings and risking a drop into the financial abyss.
After decades building skills, no one wants to surrender too quickly — but they also know it can be disastrous to wait too long.
Labunski has been anticipating a break for quite some time. Right through the sale of his stereo, the liquidation of his 401(k), the maxing of his credit cards and, finally, bankruptcy.
"You know how it is," he said. "We all think this is going to be the week we get a job." |
