Our Fiftysomething Castoffs Caste
Do you need an assistant, the guy asked me over the phone?
Well, no, I said. I have enough trouble supervising myself. Besides, I worked as managing editor of my home newspaper for 15 years. I understand how much fun it is to be responsible for other people, which is not much. Also, I’m not an employer; I’m an employee. I don’t decide if I get an assistant. My corporate masters control that decision.
Thus far, they haven’t tried to force an assistant on me, and I’m grateful.
Well, the guy said, he figured he’d give it a shot. He’s a bright, well-educated guy of 53 who used to make a six-figure income. Despite his master’s degree and his years of management experience, he’s now out of work.
He likes to do research and write. He’d hoped that maybe he could find a home helping me with this column. I felt terrible when I had to tell him I had nothing for him.
He told me, “It’s amazing what happens with some of these companies once they see me. … They clearly don’t want to hire a guy my age. This one guy with a company in Colonie (N.Y.), once he laid eyes on me, sweat was pouring off his forehead. It was clear that he thought I was there to investigate his operation for age discrimination.”
My caller was in the medical lab business until he got downsized. Luckily, he has a wife with a good job who’s keeping the household afloat.
“I’ve had interviews,” he told me, “where I’m sitting in the lobby with somebody who’s much younger. And they’ve come out and called my name, and they’ve walked toward the younger guy. And this younger guy is maybe sitting there waiting for a ride or something. And then they see me.
“And, mind you, I’ve dyed my hair. I’m maybe two-thirds gray but you wouldn’t know it. But you can only hide so much on your resume. How many years do you want to cut off? It’s fascinating to watch.”
I told him I wished I could help. I’ve looked into this before: Men in their 50s, especially their late 50s, are simply disappearing from the work force, according to U.S. Labor Department figures.
They get downsized out and can’t find anything. They have working wives. So, they finally give up. They stay home, watch Oprah and brood. And, eventually, they just disappear from the work force statistics. It’s fairly grim stuff, especially when you hear all this talk about what a booming economy we have going.
That’s true if you’re an owner. Not if you’re a worker, though.
John Zogby, a pollster, tells me that he routinely asks a question in economic polling. Do you make more or less than you did in your last job, Zogby asks? For a long time, about 25 percent of respondents said, “Less.”
Then it dropped to half that in a few years. Zogby couldn’t figure that out, so he changed the question.
He now asks if you make more or less than you did in a previous job. The number shot back up to around 25 percent. He concluded that people had been downsized twice - especially older guys with less seniority and a greater likelihood of driving up some employer’s health costs.
I told my caller about a wonderful cartoon that appeared in the Wall Street Journal last year. A kid in a cap and gown with a diploma in his hand was talking to his father.
The kid was saying, “Hey, Dad, guess what? I’ve just been hired for the job you were downsized out of.”
Yeah, my caller told me. That pretty much sums it up.