[Vision2020] Set Back by Recession, and Shut Out of Rebound

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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August 26, 2013
Set Back by Recession, and Shut Out of Rebound By MICHAEL
WINERIP<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/michael_winerip/index.html>

RIDGEWOOD, N.J. — In September 2012, it appeared that the world was John
Fugazzie’s frozen oyster. He was in charge of dairy and frozen foods for
the A.&P. supermarket chain, making $125,000 a year.

He was also a guest that month at a White House forum on joblessness, in
recognition of his work creating Neighbors-helping-Neighbors
U.S.A.<http://www.neighbors-helping-neighbors.com/>,
a volunteer networking organization with 28 chapters in New Jersey serving
1,200 unemployed, mainly white-collar, baby boomers. “John has one of the
best volunteer organizations out there,” said Ben Seigel, a deputy director
at the Labor Department. “He’s tireless and always upbeat.”

Lately Mr. Fugazzie has been feeling a little weary and beat down. One
morning last October, just before his 57th birthday, he was laid off and,
carrying a box of belongings from his office, driven home in a car service
hired by the company. In the 10 months since, he has applied for more than
400 positions and had 10 interviews, but still has no job.

He and his family are living in his 88-year-old mother’s home, and last
month he awoke at 4:30 a.m., sweating profusely, in the midst of a heart
attack.

As happens to many Americans, when he lost his job, he lost his health
insurance. He now owes $171,569.44 for the six nights he spent at the
hospital.

And so on the evening of Aug. 15, at a meeting of the job club he himself
started here two years ago, he told the others he was just like them. “I
need a job,” he said. “I need to make money now.”

Most of the 15 men and women meeting at the library in this prosperous
suburb were middle-aged or older, people who had worked all their lives,
but lost jobs in the recession and its aftermath and have not been able to
get back to where they were. Many of them worry that they never will, in
part because of discrimination by employers against older workers.

On the statistical surface, boomers seem better off than other age groups.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for
workers 55 to 64 (the category that best matches boomers, who range from 48
to 67) was 5.4 percent in July, compared with 7.4 percent for the general
population.

But almost every other number from the bureau makes it clear that while the
economy may be improving, a substantial number of older workers who lost
jobs — even those lucky enough to be re-employed — are still suffering.
Two-thirds in that age group who found work again are making less than they
did in their previous job; their median salary loss is 18 percent compared
with a 6.7 percent drop for 20- to 24-year-olds.

The re-employment rate for 55- to 64-year-olds is 47 percent and 24 percent
for those over 65, compared with 62 percent for 20- to 54-year-olds. And
finding another job takes far longer: 46 weeks for boomers, compared with
20 weeks for 16- to 24-year-olds.

Nor are those who believe age discrimination was a factor likely to have
much luck in court. In 2009, just as the economy was hitting rock-bottom,
the Supreme Court issued a ruling that toughened the standard for proving
bias.

“It’s easier for younger workers to bounce back,” says Mr. Seigel of the
Labor Department. “They don’t have many financial obligations. Older
workers are supporting families; they may be supporting parents. They can’t
afford to spend two years going back for a degree to retrain.”

At the Aug. 15 meeting, Barbara Braun, who worked as a marketing director
for a pharmaceutical company, said she wasn’t able to relocate to
California when the company moved. “I have a mother with Alzheimer’s, I
think it would have killed her,” she said. “Our lives are full of
complications we didn’t have at 35.”

They have no doubt that their age is held against them, yet work to keep
hopeful. When a woman suggested shaving a decade off her résumé and not
posting a photo on networking and job search sites to hide her age, Mr.
Fugazzie advised against it. “When you go to the interview, you’re going to
look like who you are,” he said. “To waste time hiding it when you’re only
going to lose at the other end makes no sense. If they don’t want someone
your age, you don’t want them.”

What he does recommend is lowering expectations. “You’re not likely to be
the department head,” he said, “so sell yourself as a team player who will
work with younger people and help train them.”

Since the Supreme Court ruling, most lawyers won’t even take age
discrimination cases. In an effort to change that, a bill has been filed in
the Senate each of the past several years, aimed at making it easier to
bring a discrimination lawsuit.

The latest legislation has rare bipartisan support; Senator Tom Harkin,
Democrat of Iowa, and Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, are
co-sponsors. “Older Americans have immense value to our society and our
economy,” Mr. Grassley said in a recent news release. “They deserve the
protections Congress originally intended.”

In the last Congress, along with the Democratic majority in the Senate, six
Republicans backed the legislation, although two, both moderates, Olympia
J. Snowe of Maine and Scott P. Brown of Massachusetts, are no longer in the
Senate. Cristina Martin-Firvida, a legislative specialist at AARP, says the
bill has the votes to pass the Senate, but to have a chance at becoming
law, more Republican senators would need to get behind it, which might then
persuade the Republicans who control the House to take up the measure.

At the Ridgewood meeting, people discussed job-hunting strategies. Karen
Clements, a paralegal, said she had four résumés ready to go, each
emphasizing a different skill: bookkeeping, S.E.C. compliance, fraud
investigation and intellectual property rights.

She described a friend who is dressed in business attire by 4 a.m. Mondays,
so she’ll be ready the moment an opportunity is posted online. If the firm
wants to do a Skype interview, said Ms. Clements, her friend is dressed for
Skyping. “By Tuesday they’ll have 1,000 résumés and the window will be
closed.”

“It’s like Wayne Gretzky says,” Ms. Braun told them: “You have to skate to
where the puck will be.”

They discussed the importance of following up any contact with thank-you
e-mails and handing out lots of business cards, though it’s tricky to
identify yourself when you have no job. “Be careful of the title you give
yourself — you don’t want to sound dated,” said Ms. Braun, whose business
card reads, “Barbara J. Braun, principal, BarbaraJBraun LLC, Connect Goals
to Extraordinary Outcomes.”

Several mentioned the importance of LinkedIn, the business networking site.

“You have to have at least 500 contacts,” said Lisa Sepetjian, who has been
an accounts manager for banks and small-business lenders. “Any less shows
you don’t care; you’re not in the game.”

Ms. Braun described how she was able to go from 50 LinkedIn contacts to 500
in just a week.

“I’m at 4,200,” Mr. Fugazzie said.

“I don’t want to know 500 people,” Ms. Sepetjian said. “But I want people
to know I’m not some baby boomer sitting at home eating bonbons.”

At 8:50 p.m., when a librarian announced that it was closing time, many
were still networking. Afterward, eight handed me their business cards and
several sent follow-up e-mails thanking me for coming.

By 10:30 p.m., even before I got home, the first of 10 follow-up e-mails
had arrived from Mr. Fugazzie. Attached were testimonials from five people;
copies of four certificates of commendation for
Neighbors-helping-Neighbors; and a letter of commendation to the group from
the New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, that began “Dear Friends.”

Also attached was an invitation to a May 16, 2013, meeting at the White
House to discuss long-term unemployment, which Mr. Fugazzie hadn’t been
able to attend. “I really wanted to go,” he said. “I could have made some
important contacts, but my youngest son, Tyler, was graduating from the
College of New Jersey on the same day and how could I miss that?”


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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