Tag Archives: long term unemployment

What I Learned About Leaving the Workforce Early – Some Thoughts On That

thank you CNN

thank you CNN

I’ve realized lately that I’ve read an incredible amount about early retirement, reinvention, midlife change, and related topics to probably  write a book on the subject. OK, maybe not enough for a book, but certainly enough for a blog post.

So I write this in service of anyone reading who may be contemplating these issues and the difficult decisions they often entail.

First of all, once you leave a certain level of job early, you can’t go back. It’s like going home again, you can go to the physical place, but you can’t ever recapture the feeling you think you remember. I find it’s the same kind of thing with the working world. You’ve moved on; they’ve moved on and everything is different. It’s an important choice to leave, and not one to take lightly.

I left a high paying high esteem high stress corporate type job (public relations work) in the early aughts for more time to devote to writing and filmmaking and other creative pursuits; while having that time has been great, I didn’t truly suss out the financials, whether it be self-employment or part time work or just living on savings.

While it is possible I could survive on savings, living a very frugal existence (which I have done for some of the time since I left this aforementioned job), I’m the type to get nervous at only seeing spending with no income coming in at all. So I wanted to do something, just not what I was doing before which was overwhelming (this I realized after I survived a bout of cancer while at that job).

So one of the dirty truths I’ve learned is that nobody will hire you in the same industry you used to work in at a lower level job. You can only be hired again at the same level you were at or higher. The idea that someone with a lot of experience might want a lower pressure job just for the sake of paying the bills does not really compute with the HR types or the always upwardly -driven. And it’s even more that you “marry” your job these days than it was when I left – -management employees are tethered to the company 24/7 by all manner of digital handcuffs. So, no thanks.

So if you don’t want to get back on that rat race treadmill, new opportunities will always pay less. Sometimes really a lot less. So this it another thing I’d think long and hard about: do you really need or want to leave that job so much that you’re willing to give up the salary and the perks that come with it? You’re saying “of course I do, I just have to escape it, it’s hell.” Hell is also having absurd health care costs when you have just very basic insurance; no paid holidays or vacations, no fun gadgets the corporate budget pays for, certainly no paid-for travel, food or even coffee!

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I have been greatly blessed in my life; we’re not talking about a hell of no roof over my head or no food on the table, so I’m really not complaining so much as managing expectations. But can someone tell me whatever happened to that idea of job-sharing – for instance, you “share” the job, say, of PR Director with another person; perhaps they work mornings and you work afternoons, or alternate days. You’d think in PR, which as a industry has a ton of female executives, there’d be mothers who’d want that kind of arrangement. But it seems it never took off. One person I asked told me it was around the idea of benefits, as in, who gets the healthcare. Just one more reason for national single payer, Medicare for everyone, if you ask me.

Another thing I’d mention is that age discrimination is rampant and horrible and really hard to pin down. After my last full-time job layoff at the end of 2009, I got crickets response to my resume, with its 30 years of PR experience and several more years of publishing experience. Gurus I talked to encouraged me to leave off the year of my college graduation (1980 – and that was 3 years later than if I’d gone directly after high school) but I figured when they called me in for the interview they’d figure out my age anyway. Except – there haven’t been any interviews! I’ve not been called into any interviews for full time communications jobs in the last five years. Depressing, sure. You become, in a sense, unmanageable (and I understand this now) which derives from many things – experience, age, temperament, your accumulated wisdom, etc.

So one of the gurus told me: “I think consulting is the way you should go.”

Truly, she was correct. And actually, there wasn’t much alternative. So I have become a B2B writing consultant. But this guru also said: “And then you must commit to it 3000 percent!” She was right about that, too. Passion is key if you’re going to become successfully self-employed. Not everyone is cut out for this. For most of us, clients don’t grow on trees. You need to do major marketing work to have a chance to bring in the work — so again, make sure this is something you really want to do.

Some other thoughts on early retirement/involuntary retirement: If you retire at, say, 55, that’s maybe 30 years in retirement. That’s a long time, a really long time! You really need to think long and hard about what you’re going to do with all that time. Lying around the pool or catching up on TV series is OK for a month or so, but beyond that I think most people need a purpose. In fact, I’d say you shouldn’t retire even at a traditional retirement age of 65 or 66 unless you have a plan for what you’re going to do with all that time.

I used to look down on people who were unemployed or said they couldn’t find a job, thinking they were probably doing it wrong or just plain lazy. Then it happened to me. Funny how that works, eh?

I have more pearls I hope to share in future posts.

 

 

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The Stages of Grief Apply Here — to the Long Term Unemployment issue

thus resulting in life change.

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I guess even the cops can go out of business.

I just realized they apply to this situation, there is a definite “grief” process – when you lose a job, can’t find another, resulting in major changes in the way you think.

What am I talking about?

These are Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ Five Stages of Grief:

 

  • anger
  • bargaining (if only)
  • depression
  • acceptance

Nobody exactly died, not physically anyway, but certainly the old self, employed in the way I was, doing the things I did, is no more. So that really is a kind of death, isn’t it?

How these played out for me:

Denial: Although I did not deny the fact that it happened, that I was laid off, I did likely deny it’s seriousness, its implications. The last full time job layoff for me occurred in November, 2009. I do remember thinking “well, might as well take the holidays off, as no one will be hiring between now and New Year’s, anyway. . .”  I also didn’t think it too odd when my resume was not responded to, as in, not responded to at all. . .when that had never happened before. (this time, of course, it’s different: both the economy and the job market)

Anger: I can see this in two areas: 1) intense anger at the non-profit I worked for, which laid off an entire department (3 white gay men and one African-American straight woman, 3 of us over 50, all of us over 45) and the perceived age discrimination there (of course, it didn’t help that the person who laid us all off was herself gay and over 50) as well as the perceived age discrimination as the reason for the above-referenced non-response to any job I applied for.

Bargaining: I can see this most clearly as I looked at my previous jobs and some decisions I made: would I have resigned from that great tech PR job if I knew that the economy was set to implode? Of course, I would not! Why did I take long periods off between work, not even to do freelance? This was coming back to haunt me! Surely, if I’d had a more traditional working career, I’d be snatched up by now. I’d changed emphasis or industry in my 20s, in my 30s,  in my 4os, and here it was again, in my 50s. Woulda-coulda-shoulda, over and over and over. And it’s still going over and over and over (these stages are not linear or easily abandoned, it seems!)

Depression:  This has also been a long, ongoing slog. Depressed that work life as I knew it was over, depressed at frightening visions of never having an income, or a forced retirement and what that might look like. There were periods of lightness, where there’d be hope of going in a different direction or that there would be some other kind of life, then a return to depression. During this time there were a couple of real deaths in our family, which, of course, didn’t help much (but certainly put the rest of it all in perspective). In retrospect, I do see that much of this was necessary, that long night one must go through to get to that next place. So, finally,

Acceptance: The world has changed, the work world has changed, and I along with it. Now, I don’t even want what I had before, though it’s certainly not available to me if I did. The past four (four plus, now) years have changed me. I hope it’s for the better, for the depth of experience, that makes one a richer man. I am older, more ornery (if that is even possible) and have come to see the advantages of where I find myself along the work/not work/whatever spectrum. With that comes a certain resilience. We’ve (that’s the royal we) all survived thus far, there’s no reason to think it won’t continue, and that it will be an adventure.

No doubt.

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CHART OF THE DAY: Long Term Unemployment Is Huge Problemo — and moreso if you happen to be older

CHART OF THE DAY: Long Term Unemployment Is A Huge Problem — Especially If You’re Old

Good times!

I was at a party over the weekend, celebrating Day of the Dead, a few days late. Most of the attendees were contemporaries, give or take 10 years on either side.

It’s amazing to me how things have changed for me and others I talked to, both at that party and generally. Those of us who’ve lost professional jobs in the “downturn”/”recession”/”depression” or whatever you want to call the time period from 2007 to now and are of a certain age haven’t exactly had primo offers extended to us. Instead, we’ve been forced to look at work creatively, to be entrepreneurial, to take risks and see what sticks and what does not.
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There’s a lot of temp work, or short term assignments with no security and no benefits. Plans for self-employment. There’s a lot of early pension taking and calendar countdowns to social security. Almost everyone I know, including those employed full time with benefits, has a horror story about health care costs.

It’s an exciting, yet also a horrible time. I believe we’re on the cusp of something great for the people (and by that I mean the 99%), but there will be a lot of hard times and hard fighting to come before we come out on the other side.
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Andy Kroll’s The Face of An American Lost Generation | TomDispatch

Sign for derelict business, Texas panhandle

Andy’s Story link: The Face of An American Lost Generation | TomDispatch.

Above is the link to the great story by Andy Kroll about long-term unemployment published in TomDispatch as well as on HuffPo.

His story is more comprehensive than the usual thing I’m reading these days. Also interesting that the industry in question, RV manufacture, isn’t something that we’re importing from China. Perhaps the glory days of this particular consumerist orgy are behind us? I’m not sure I think that’s a bad thing, but I’m in the same boat as the man profiled here. Different part of the country and different background, but also without work – or should I say, a work provided by others, a traditional job.

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“So who are these unfortunate or unlucky people? Long-term unemployment, research shows, doesn’t discriminate: no age, race, ethnicity, or educational level is immune. According to federal data, however, the hardest hit when it comes to long-term unemployment are older workers — middle aged and beyond, folks like Rick Rembold who can see retirement on the horizon but planned on another decade or more of work. Given the increasing claims of age discrimination in this recession, older Americans suffering longer bouts of joblessness may not in itself be so surprising. That education seemingly works against anyone in this older cohort is. Nearly half of the long-term unemployed who are 45 or older have “some college,” a bachelor’s degree, or more. By contrast, those with no education at all make up just 15% of this older category. In other words, if you’re older and well educated, the outlook is truly grim.”

I’ve decided I shouldn’t read these gloom and doom pronouncements, though it’s hard, I’m drawn to them kind of like a moth to a flame. There was another great and similar story in the LA Times yesterday, a Steve Lopez piece.

Still, I think the best advice I’ve heard since I began this journey on Friday, November 13, 2009, is at a seminar where a wonderful woman said that “there were no jobs, so I had to invent one for myself.” I’m still in the place where I think I can do this. That, in itself, is pretty American, right?

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