I WAS recently talking to a friend at a party whose husband — in his
60s — has been unemployed for more than two years. While there are many
challenges, she said, one of the hardest things is trying to balance
hope with reality.
She wonders how to support him in his
continued quest to find a job in his field of marketing and financial
services while at the same time encouraging him to think about what his
life would be like if he never worked in that field or had a full-time
job again.
“I wanted to move to what I thought was a healthier
place. I wanted to turn the page,” said my friend, who asked to be
identified by her middle name, Shelley, since she didn’t want to
publicize her family’s situation. “He saw it as vote of no confidence.”
For
those over 50 and unemployed, the statistics are grim. While
unemployment rates for Americans nearing retirement are lower than for
young people who are recently out of school, once out of a job, older
workers have a much harder time finding work. Over the last year,
according to the Labor Department, the average duration of unemployment
for older people was 53 weeks, compared with 19 weeks for teenagers.
There
are numerous reasons — older workers have been hit both by the
recession and globalization. They’re more likely to have been laid off
from industries that are downsizing, and since their salaries tend to be
higher than those of younger workers, they’re attractive targets if
layoffs are needed.
Even as they do all the things they’re told
to do — network, improve those computer skills, find a new passion and
turn it into a job — many struggle with the question of whether their
working life as they once knew it is essentially over.
This is
something professionals who work with and research the older unemployed
say needs to be addressed better than it is now. Helping people figure
out how to cope with a future that may not include work, while at the
same time encouraging them in their job searches, is a difficult
balance, said Nadya Fouad, a professor of educational psychology at the
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Psychologists and others who
counsel this cohort need to help them face the grief of losing a job,
and also to understand that jobs and job-hunting are far different now
from how they used to be.
“The contract used to be, ‘I am a loyal
employee and you are a loyal employer. I promise to work for you my
entire career and you train, promote, give benefits and a pension when I
retire.’ Now you can’t count on any of that,” she said. “The onus is
all on the employee to have a portfolio of skills that can be
transferable.”
People in their 20s and 30s know that they need to
market themselves and always be on the lookout for better
opportunities, she said, something that may seem foreign to those in
their 50s and 60s.
If a counselor or psychologist “doesn’t
understand how the world of work has changed, they’re not helping at
all,” she said. “You can’t just talk about how it feels.”
In
response to this concern, Professor Fouad and her colleagues have drawn
up guidelines for the American Psychological Association to help
psychotherapists better assist their clients with workplace issues and
unemployment. It is wending its way through the association’s
committees.
Of course, not everyone who is unemployed and over 50
is equal. For some, the reality is that they need to find another job —
any job — to survive. Others have resources that can allow them to
spend more time looking for a job that might have the salary or status
of their former position.
In the first case, Professor Fouad
said, “You need to decide what is the minimum amount of money you can
make and how to go about finding it.” In the second case, she said, it’s
necessary to examine what work means to you and how that may have to
change.
Is it the high social status? The identity? The
relationship with co-workers? It is important to examine these areas,
perhaps with the help of a professional counselor, Professor Fouad said,
to discover how to find such meaning or relationships in other areas of
life.
Sometimes simply changing the way you look at your
situation can help. My friend Shelley’s husband, Neal, who also asked
that I use his middle name, said the best advice he received from a
friend was “don’t tell people you’re unemployed. Tell them you’re
semiretired. It changed my self-identity. I still look for jobs, but I
feel better about myself.”
He also has friends facing the same
issues, who understand his situation. Such support groups, whether
formal or informal, are very helpful, said Jane Goodman, past president
of the American Counseling Association and professor emerita of
counseling at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich.
“Legitimizing
the fact that this stinks also helps,” she said. “I find that when I
say this, clients are so relieved. They thought I was going to say,
‘buck up.’ ”
And even more, “they should know the problem is not
with them but with a system that has treated them like a commodity that
can be discarded,” said David L. Blustein, a professor of counseling,
developmental and educational psychology at the Lynch School of
Education at Boston College, who works with the older unemployed in
suburb of Boston. “I try to help clients get in touch with their anger
about that. They shouldn’t blame themselves.”
Which, of course, is easy to say and hard to do.
“I
know not to take it personally,” Neal said, “but sure, I wonder at
times, what’s wrong with me? Is there something I should be doing
differently?”
It is too easy to sink into endless rumination, to
wonder if he is somehow standing in his own way, like a cancer patient
who is told that her attitude is her problem, he said.
Susan Sipprelle, producer of the Web site overfiftyandoutofwork.com and the documentary “Set for Life” about the older jobless, said she stopped posting articles like “Five Easy Steps to get a New Job.”
“People are so frustrated,” she said. “They don’t want to hear, ‘Get a new wardrobe, get on LinkedIn.’ ”
As
one commenter on the Facebook page for Over Fifty and Out of Work said,
“I’ve been told to redo my résumé twice now. The first ‘expert’ tells
me to do it one way, the next ‘expert’ tells me to put it back the way I
had it.”
Some do land a coveted position in their old fields or
turn a hobby into a business. Neal, although he believes he’ll never
make as much money as in the past, recently has reason to be optimistic
about some consulting jobs.
But the reality is that the problem
of the older unemployed “was acute during the Great Recession, and is
now chronic,” Ms. Sipprelle said. “People’s lives have been upended by
the great forces of history in a way that’s never happened before, and
there’s no other example for older workers to look at. Some can’t
recoup, though not through their own fault. They’re the wrong age at the
wrong time. It’s cold comfort, but better than suggesting that if you
just dye your hair, you’ll get that job.”
