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What If You Still Cannot Find Work?
“Economy, in Sweet Spot, Adds 313,000 Jobs. It May Get Sweeter.” — Washington Post
So, here I am, in month five of not working. Failed to land a client on my first pass at consulting. While my wife found a job after 15 years of not working, After 25 years of working, in the greatest recovery in that 25 years, I cannot get anyone even to interview me. I have taken advice. I have networked. I have submitted lord only knows how many resumes. I have changed my cover letter for jobs. I have met with a dozen people in “informational interviews.” Either I don’t hear back, I am told “someone else is better qualified” for jobs I could do in my sleep, or I get “You have a strong resume, and you are going to find something.”
Now, I am not using this thread to complain, for am I actually in better spirits than ever, all things considered. For one thing, I am almost walking normally. No, this thread is more about the general idea of those left behind. In a world gearing up for the millennial crowd, folks like me are left out. Oh, in theory, my age is a protected class, but age discrimination in the workplace is alive and well. Overqualified just means “you are going to cost too much.”
What I think conservatives need to acknowledge is that we have a culture where working is needed to survive. We value work, and rightly so. However, the fact I cannot find a job to hire me, even stuff I am very overqualified for, shows that “get a job” is not much of an answer. Sure, we can say that no employer owes anyone a job. But, what do we say to someone who plays by the rules, did nothing wrong to lose his job, and cannot find someplace to take his 25 years of experience? I have heard already all the advice on how to obtain a job. It has not worked. LinkedIn has a group full of people in my age range, and they all have similar tales to tell. So, I am not owed a job, and I have to earn it. Great. I did that and the outcome was losing a job I had earned, and thus far, no one will offer me another chance. Not even a chance at an interview.
What I expect to see in this thread, is lots of advice on that boils down to “well you must be doing it wrong.” Classic conservative response, which is to blame the person with no job. Believe me, I am doing everything I have been told to try, networking, and I am working hard, daily to launch by business, TalkForward. I do think that is my long term right path. I just have to try to support my family in the meantime (another conservative “should”).
I’d like to avoid the advice giving, and concentrate on what our message should be. Right now, we tell people they must work hard to get ahead, that they have no right to a job, and that if they work hard, they will get a job and succeed. OK, gang, I am a model of a hard worker, I am not lazy, I give my all to every task I am assigned. I worked from the bottom of an organization to the top. And it was taken away for nothing I did wrong. I am doing everything conservatives have told me to do, and I am not getting the American Dream. What do you tell someone like me, other than “Life is not fair?”
I feel if we cannot message better than this, then the Republican will always be the second party. I fear if we cannot find a message to address people like me, the left will always win in the long run, because it has a message to address it.
Published in General
I dunno. I lost a long-term job when I was 56. Found a new job in a month. When I lost that a few years (due to the 2014-15 oil bust) later I found another job within three months (temp) and then another job when that ended. One way or another I found work. Part of the reason is I found a niche where there was a high demand and low supply of workers (technical writing). If you can do something few others can and for which there is a high demand no one cares about your age.
As to being better off as a plumber or auto mechanic than a lawyer? Well, yeah. Plumbing and auto repair is honest work.
Not to mention on-line availability (as I’ve seen for spiritual direction), just a thought…
This is what is going on. Technological deflation (this creates wage deflation and destruction of jobs) and globalized labor markets (this creates wage deflation and destruction of jobs). In other words, progress creates purchasing power. Except our government and our financial system literally has to have the the Federal Reserve run with 2% (supposedly measured) inflation. Then throw in the fact that far too much of our economy is cartel-ized via the political system and government. It’s obvious that some are protected and some take it on the chin unfairly and to a larger degree. Even if you don’t lose your job, the Fed and the cartels make sure your cost of living never progresses enough. It’s a stupid system. It quit “working” decades ago.
Charles Hugh Smith and David Stockman are the best at explaining this stuff.
***one edit***
I agree. It must help that your wife works. My brother was in your position and he is single (divorced). Mid fifties are a really crappy time to be downsized. It is a long time to retirement age. He refused to do anything besides be a photographer. The demand just wasn’t there, and he could not adapt. He would have been great working at an outdoor center/ home center. He loves to fish and garden and is good at both. He said they were degrading. He might have ended up store manager had he put his foot in the door.
I read a long while back it took about a month per 10,000 in income as a general rule to find the next job.
I also know as a family of self employed, it takes time to get a business off the ground.
Plumbing and auto mechanicing is also physical work that becomes more and more difficult as we get older.
And they take brains.
I don’t think it’s necessarily anyone’s fault. It just is.
Some people are born without limbs or certain abilities. Are they lesser people? Is it their fault? Decidedly no.
Is it his fault that he is unemployed? Well, to some extent possibly. If he didn’t do the office politics right or wasn’t competent, then that could be a factor. But it’s not always the case. Often it’s just the way things go.
It’s true that if you have a skill or ability in high demand, you won’t be out of work long, but that is just luck. Some of the smartest, wisest and hardest working people in the world are unemployed because what they offer just isn’t wanted anymore.
Being unemployed is very hard on every part of your life and your self-perception. It is extremely important to be clear thinking and honest with yourself as to why you are in the situation you’re in. Did you play the office politics wrong? Or is your boss just evil and blames you for his mistakes (both have happened to me). Is it that your expertise is not in high demand (for instance the economy craters and businesses are moving manufacturing overseas at unheard of levels) or is there some hope for the demand to supply you with a job?
What are your other skill sets? I realized I was a former Marine officer and there was a war on. I took advantage of that boom in demand. That got me back into a very good retirement plan. But I also decided that even if I got a job in manufacturing again, there was a good chance that that job would be going overseas soon too. I realized I had to find another line of work, so I went to law school and work for myself in a field that won’t pay me well, I’m not particularly suited for (I’m an engineer at heart) but that will reliably allow me to feed my family as I get older and can’t climb on machines any more.
I was certainly depressed for a while but confidence overcame any down days and I worked to change my circumstances.
Here are my recommendations:
I’m in a similar situation, but about 20-25 years away from retirement. My focus now is on paying off the house as quickly as possible to open up my options. I figure either we’ll have some major tech revolution and I’ll be replaced but also need much less money to live a decent life, or I’ll be working until I die.
Of course, I don’t know when I’ll die, so I guess I might be working until I die in any event.
As a teacher, I’ve always said that sometimes struggling students need a pat on the back and sometimes they need a kick in the pants (metaphorical) and the problem is, you don’t know in any given situation which one will work to motivate the student to keep on going. To not give up. I believe that both are compassionate, even if it isn’t what someone wants to hear. Because sometimes the truth is hard.
I believe and hope that next year, you will be writing a different story here. How your perseverance and will got you through this most difficult of times because you didn’t give up. And that to me is the conservative message; we keep going even though life isn’t fair and sometimes bad things happen to good people and they can’t be fixed. Because life doesn’t give us guarantees. But we know this to be true: if we keep striving, we may or may not win; but if we give up we will surely lose.
Yet, compassion from politicians will mean government aid. It always does because if you have a hammer every solution is just a nail or however the saying goes. This is the trap of conservatism and the plight you express. What is the governments answer to drug addiction? Depression? Obesity? What can it be other than a government program, subsidies, tax intensives, study committees etc?
People looking for comfort and sympathy from the government means promoting progressive policies. This is why we have progressivism today. Because over 100 years ago people had these same fundamental problems and the answer society came up with was the social welfare state. Is there a modern, wealthy, liberal democratic nation that does not have a social welfare program?
So maybe we should figure out what kind of welfare state is most agreeable with our values and then push for that and stop pretending like we don’t need or want a welfare state.
The GOP has to come up with a plan for government to stop destroying human capital and human progress, and then explain it. Who could be against that on the right? …oh wait…uh…
I have never thought of this before so there must be some flaws with it.
Look at the 70s. Why was there so much inflation? How did that happen? Who were the winners and losers? Retirees that had bonds got killed. How many wage earners did well? What was the geopolitical situation for labor markets? What did our demographic bubble look like? Deflationary technology obviously wasn’t a big deal.
What’s the important variable here? Government and the Fed. Then Ronald Reagan have the courage to tell Volker to stop the inflation and not worry about his reelection. 25 years of disbursed prosperity followed.
Get the Fed and the government out of the way and the other variables will take care of themselves.
Bryan,
I’m late to this thread but wanted to say, first, I understand. Also, there are some great comments that I won’t repeat. My only message is to consider running your own business.
Entrepreneurship isn’t for the faint of heart, however, you don’t have to be alone. Incredible organizations like SCORE and the NFIB provide assistance in the form of counseling (SCORE) and discounts on insurance, etc. (NFIB).
The key is do something you have a passion for. It may not happen overnight and in most cases, you will need to make an investment in yourself. Be wary of get-rich-quick franchises or those house flipping seminars.
But I think for many people in our age group, the best thing they can do is to use their background, experience, and smarts to enrich themselves, not someone else.
I didn’t post this earlier, because it seemed like Bryan wanted to have a conversation about people who are not necessarily himself, and I want to respect that. But I think it is a valid point.
It’s not unusual for a job search to take at least 6 months even when the economy is at full employment. I don’t think the 1 month per $10k statistic is actually valid anymore, but it’s a little early to start assuming that the only explanations for what is going on are age descrimination, something wrong with the applicant, or large structural problems with the macro-economy.
Which might actually be why there’s no satisfying narrative of the kind that Bryan thinks is missing. He’s still in a phase of the search where there is no obvious place to point the finger, unless you have a prior agenda. I mean, if he was unemployed for a longer time, it would be easier to narrow it down to something structural that could be remedied through the political process, and then build narratives to support that remedy. But at 5 months? That used to be the average time spent unemployed between jobs before the financial crisis.
This. :)
The best way to release your inner salesman for your business is to become excited about what you can do to help people.
When you believe that your services will make your client’s life better somehow, the sales pitch comes easily.
I used to be on another forum that had a really smart labor economist. I recall him saying that the smartest thing a person can do for ongoing prosperity is have a ton of contacts. I’m pretty sure that was based on research, not just his anecdotal opinion.
I wasn’t clear. The point of the analogy is that the statist point has no merit at all as an argument.
The interventionist promises to fix “what is seen”, as Claude-Frédéric Bastiat taught us. The people accept because they don’t think about “what is unseen”: the immeasurable damage to other people in other places and future times. Like our present author.
The future arrives. A valuable worker cannot find a job. What was part of “what is unseen” when the intervention was agreed to is now a visible problem. It is “what is seen”, and we repeat the cycle, descending gradually, of our own will, into statist slavery.
The unemployed victim and his friends and family, and his helpful politicians and pundits don’t see the cause-and-effect connection of their past bad choices and the present particular pain.
I give this post one million “likes”.
This isn’t what it seems, either. The “quality” of what is going on here isn’t like in the past. Peter Schiff, Charles Hugh Smith, and David Stockman are very good at explaining it.
Bryan, I am sorry for your plight.
Despite all the happy talk in the media, the economy has not done well at all in a very long time. Your are not alone. It is not your fault.
During most of the Obama years, the small business sector was shrinking, but since it is hard to assess small business employment data, the Labor Department kept on plugging in numbers from times when small business was growing. So, as a result, much of the job growth was overstated. Even with that the Labor Department acknowledged that 17 million people left the work force during the Obama Administration, and only a small fraction of that 17 million retired. An employment disaster occurred despite what the media said. Male employment and Black employment are at all time lows.
The good news is despite some of the claims above, older workers are still very valued in the workforce. During the Obama years, the 45-64 year old cohort did the best among all age groups. Millennials did horribly.
Starting your own consulting firm can be a tough row to hoe. New clients are hard to come by when you are starting out. Getting new clients can be agonizingly slow and very frustrating. I don’t know what your financial situation is or whether you need income quickly, but may I suggest trying to sell real estate. It does take some time to get licensed depending on your state and like everything time to get established, but a smart and affable guy may be able to do well. You will not be hindered by your age and real estate sales clients are much easier to get than your normal consulting gig. A guy who can listen and get along with people, is smart, who knows his neighborhoods, and who knows the market can do very well fairly quickly. Also most of the action in residential real estate in on the weekends, so you still can pursue your other consulting gig if that is your passion. Whatever thing you do if it is in small business/ consulting field, it is helpful to join clubs , community and church groups to widen your circle of friends and acquaintances. Potential clients are easier to come by that way.
Best of luck.
Back to the message question: No system can produce 100% perfect match between people and jobs. Free market systems and non-free market systems both leave some people in unsatisfactory job situations. My message would be that the free market produces a higher level of satisfactory match between people and jobs than any non-free market system.
Free market advocates contend that the free market produces more ideal person to job match than do non-free market systems. The free market does produce mis-matches. On systemic issues, new technology or changes in markets do leave out in the cold people who are very skilled in work that is no longer needed (buggy whip makers at the dawn of the 20th Century, stevedores when container shipping was developed, telephone operators when dial telephones were distributed, etc.). Hiring managers do not always hire the best person for a particular job, due to bias, failure to recognize fully company needs or candidate capabilities. A free market will almost certainly leave a worker unable to find the right work, and/or an employer unable to find the right worker. But, in the aggregate, most people will find a job that they really like in a free market. Unfortunately each of us is not the “aggregate,” but an individual pebble who may get left out. [A free market also provides the opportunity to create our own job, but that has its own risks and costs.]
Non-free market systems may appear to have a job for everyone, and they are always promoted on such a basis. But when actual facts on the ground are examined, it turns out that lots of people get put into jobs that they don’t like, or that don’t match their skills or interests. Look at the information from the Soviet Union on medical doctors driving taxi cabs and other serious mis-matches between individuals and jobs. A non-free market system of matching people and jobs requires someone in a command position to know at a minimum the skills, interests, and personality of every potentially available employee and the skills required of every potential job. Since we are dealing with human beings, there are multiple often unpredictable variables for each potential match. Can any command system fully account for all those variables? A command system that tries to undertake such matches cannot know enough to be successful in all cases, and is unlikely to be successful in very many cases.
So, both free market and non-free market systems produce mismatch between people and jobs. I think the evidence is that free market systems produce a lower rate of mismatch than do non-free market systems.
Unfortunately, advocates of non-free market systems can advertise the ideal, and hide the reality, and free free market advocates end up having to deal with the fact that reality is more complicated than the ideals.
And this is made way, way worse because we have traded purchasing power for asset bubbles. The Fed just can’t stop over-empowering government and the financial system. This stupidity will end the hard way.
I lay much of that at the foot of the Social Security system.
What would a Moralist Rockefeller Republican, or a neocon, or whatever is similar, say about this discussion? What could they contribute? Or is it easier for them to hysterically wig out about Trump and Trump voters?
I wish, oh how I wish that I knew how to respond to someone having this issue.
There are so many trite answers, so many simple explanations. So many ignorant comments. How often “Oh, you won’t have any problems.”
But even if you have no welfare state you can be unemployed. So how can you tell the difference between market driven unemployment and state driven unemployment? Prior to the emergence of the modern welfare state people still suffered great economic dislocation and uncertainty. That is why the welfare state was created from the surplus of economic out put. A promise of future theoretical wealth is meaningless if prior to that you are thrown into utter ruin. People’s risk aversion to that over potential future rewards is not irrational given that ruin is an irreversible state. I don’t think empirically we can say that the welfare state proposed by progressives of the early 20th century has been a disaster, unless we think all of our economic gains since then have been hollow, but how can we think that without being totally counter factual? So isn’t the proof that progressive policies work or at least have merit in the fact that they were implemented and today we are better off than we were?
The problem is that it’s managed for the for the people that live off of the state, not the theoretical good reasons it was enacted. It’s not going to keep “working”. No way. It’s killing disbursed growth.
Welfare state + discretionary central banking = regressive, unfair economy and eventual bond market collapse.
Also, be sure to vote!
Bryan,
I haven’t seen this particular suggestion as I scrolled through the comments so I’ll offer it here:
If your skills and experience dovetail at all with any courses taught at local community colleges, you might try teaching some courses as an adjunct instructor. Pay is not spectacular, but the hours are flexible, the students I encountered during my stints at adjuncting were for the most part bright and motivated, and the money came in handy as I continued to look for full time work. No one holds it against you that you were thought of highly enough to teach at the college level, and it looks good on the resume.
Good luck!
That is so true. I read a couple of remarks here on this topic regarding how terrible it would be if the government did something to address problems relating to job hiring. These seemed to be stated in a smirky manner.
But the fact is that the government has already taken several stands with much legislation regarding jobs. Large companies and government agencies already must abide by Affirmative Action standards, which put all white people at a disadvantage.
Secondly companies that pay for their employees’ health insurance know full well that having older workers really hits them much harder in terms of HC insurance premiums.
Ten years ago, this household experience much of what many others here are mentioning – the unemployed who are over forty are in a Dead Zone in terms of finding work. If we could make the existence of Fed state and local tax breaks available for employers hiring people from bad inner city neighborhoods, why can’t there be similar tax breaks for employers who hire from this age group?