6. What categories of workers are unlikely to regain their jobs? Why?

7. How is the job crisis worse than in the past decades?

8. What can be done to help unemployed workers?

9. What has Ms Norton done in order to find a new job?

10. Why does she feel hopeless?

 

 

 

Many of the jobs lost during the recession are not coming back. For the last two years, the weak economy has provided an opportunity for employers to do what they would have done anyway: dismiss millions of people — like file clerks, ticket agents and autoworkers — who were displaced by technological advances and international trade. […] The tough environment has been especially disorienting for older and more experienced workers like Cynthia Norton, 52, an unemployed administrative assistant in Jacksonville. “I know I’m good at this,” says Ms. Norton. “So how the hell did I end up here?”

Administrative work has always been Ms. Norton’s “calling,” she says, ever since she started work as an assistant for her aunt at 16, back when the uniform was a light blue polyester suit and a neckerchief. In the ensuing decades she has filed, typed and answered phones for just about every breed of business, from a law firm to a strip club. […] But since she was laid off from an insurance company two years ago, no one seems to need her well-honed office know-how.

Ms. Norton is one of 1.7 million Americans who were employed in clerical and administrative positions when the recession began, but were no longer working in that occupation by the end of last year. There have also been outsize job losses in other occupation categories that seem unlikely to be revived during the economic recovery. The number of printing machine operators, for example, was nearly halved from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2009. The number of people employed as travel agents fell by 40 percent.

This “creative destruction” in the job market can benefit the economy. Pruning relatively less-efficient employees like clerks and travel agents, whose work can be done more cheaply by computers or workers abroad, makes American businesses more efficient. Year over year, productivity growth was at its highest level in over 50 years last quarter, pushing corporate profits to record highs and helping the economy grow.

But a huge group of people are being left out of the party. Millions of workers who have already been unemployed for months, if not years, will most likely remain that way even as the overall job market continues to improve, economists say. The occupations they worked in, and the skills they currently possess, are never coming back in style. And the demand for new types of skills moves a lot more quickly than workers — especially older and less mobile workers — are able to retrain and gain those skills.

There is no easy policy solution for helping the people left behind. The usual unemployment measures — like jobless benefits and food stamps — can serve as temporary palliatives, but they cannot make workers’ skills relevant again.

Ms. Norton has sent out hundreds of résumés without luck. […] Ms. Norton is reluctant to believe that her three decades of experience and her typing talents, up to 120 words a minute, are now obsolete. […] The problem cannot be that the occupation she has devoted her life to has been largely computerized, she says. “You can’t replace the human thought process,” she says. “I can anticipate people’s needs. Usually, I give them what they want before they even know they need it. There will never be a machine that can do that.”

And that is true, up to a point: human judgment still counts for something. That means some of the filing jobs, just like some of the manufacturing jobs, that were cut during the recession will return. But a lot of them probably will not. Offices, not just in Jacksonville but all over the country, have found that life without a secretary or filing clerk […] is actually pretty manageable. After all, the office environment is more automated and digitized than ever. Bosses can handle their own calendars, travel arrangements and files through their own computers and ubiquitous BlackBerrys. In many offices, voice mail systems and doorbells — not receptionists — greet callers and visitors. […]

Economists have seen this type of structural change many times before. “This always happens in recessions,” says John Schmitt, a senior economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “Employers see them as an opportunity to clean house and then get ready for the next big move in the labor market.” […]

But there is reason to think restructuring may take a bigger toll this time around. The percentage of unemployed workers who were permanently let go has hovered at a record high of over 50 percent for several months. Additionally […], many unemployed workers are unable to find new work even after months or years of searching. […] The percentage of unemployed people who have been looking for jobs for more than six months is at 45.9 percent, the highest in at least six decades.

And so the question is what kinds of policy responses can help workers like Ms. Norton who are falling further and further behind in the economic recovery, and are at risk of falling out of the middle class.

Of course, just as there is a structural decline in some industries, others enjoy structural growth (the “creative” part of “creative destruction”). The key is to prepare the group of workers left behind for the growing industry. […]

Ms. Norton, for her part, may be reluctant to acknowledge that many of her traditional administrative assistant skills are obsolete, but she has tried to retrain — or as she puts it, adapt her existing skills — to a new career in the expanding health care industry. Even that has proved difficult.

She attended an eight-month course last year, on a $17,000 student loan, to obtain certification as a medical assistant. She was trained to do front-office work, like billing, as well as back-office work, like giving injections and drawing blood. The school that trained her, though, neglected to inform her that local employers require at least a year’s worth of experience — generally done through volunteering at a clinic — before hiring someone for a paid job in the field. She says she cannot afford to spend a year volunteering, especially with her student loan coming due soon. […]

With so few local job prospects and most of her possessions of value already liquidated she has considered selling her blood to help pay for the move. But she says she cannot find a market for that, either; blood collection agencies, she said, told her they do not buy her blood type. “Sometimes I think I’d be better off in jail,” she says, only half joking. “I’d have three meals a day and structure in my life. I’d be able to go to school. I’d have more opportunities if I were an inmate than I do here trying to be a contributing member of society.”

 

 

As I walk down London's Westbourne Grove, it suddenly hits me. The world looks the same, but my life as it was a decade ago is over. Around me, well-dressed women are happily chatting in restaurants and cafes, their shopping nestling safely at their elegantly shod feet, next to their designer handbags.

Less than ten years ago, that was me, but today it's like peering through a window in my past. Like so many middle-class people, I slid into poverty when fees for my work froze or plummeted and the cost of living soared.

I am currently one of thousands of middle-class paupers out there putting on a brave face and pretending nothing has changed when, in fact, beneath the glossy varnish of the facade, our entire way of life is crumbling under the crushing pressure of the credit crunch. Perhaps those same smug-looking women lunching in Westbourne Grove are secretly dreading that sickening moment when the bill arrives, too ashamed to admit they can't afford to pay it.

Five years ago, I worked in film and was earning £1,200 a week. My partner and I started a new business and we borrowed and borrowed and bought a country house alongside the two we owned between us in London. We practically rebuilt it […].We moved to the Cotswolds and I even bought another cottage as an 'investment'. What hubris!

When the recession hit, we realised the value of our properties had slumped and we were largely in negative equity. We had to rearrange our lives totally. I now live in a two-bedroom rented flat in West London.

What I can earn by writing and making the occasional short film brings in just enough to cover the rent. For many articles I write, I earn no more than £250 and often struggle to make £500 a week – just over what my rent is. But, superficially, my habits remain the same: I go to parties, eat at restaurants when my friends invite me, and pray they don't ask me to go Dutch. It is rather ironic that a favourite middle-class pastime is to moan about the cost of mortgages, school fees and domestic help, but the minute we really can't pay them, we clam up.

When alcoholics stop drinking, they tell everyone they're on the wagon and avoid their boozier friends. When we can no longer pay our way, do we shun our wealthier friends? No, we cling to our old haunts and habits, preferring to go without food at home rather than admit to a friend we can't afford their trendy organic cafe of choice for lunch. We think nothing of donning a dress that once cost the earth to attend a glamorous party or a restaurant opening. We sip our champagne and move easily among the same old circle of friends, chatting away about what we're up to.

In reality, a vast chasm yawns between us and, well…us. Some of us still have bags of money, some of us can't afford to take a cab home. But on the surface, we all look the same. It's as if thousands of middle-class people are dangling in mid-air, legs waving. We've been ejected from our old lives, but we're desperately resisting hitting the ground with a splat. […]

 

 

 

Read the second part of the article and answer the questions.

1. What kind of life did the Risbridgers and the Mimms live?
2. What were their trimmings of success?
3. What changed their lives?
4. Did their lifestyle change immediately?
5. How did they feel?
6. How did they overcome the unexpected situation?

 

Deborah Risbridger, 45, has run her own PR consultancy, DRA Public Relations, for more than 20 years. She lives with husband Paul, 46, and their three children under ten. The Risbridgers came of age in the Eighties. “Paul and I are Thatcher's children,” Deborah says. “Like many of that generation, we believed everything we touched would turn to gold and for the first ten or 15 years it did. […] our earnings were rocketing and naively we believed it would go on for ever”. […].'

Over time and on credit, the Risbridgers acquired all the trimmings of success: a five-bedroom house in Buckinghamshire, with an Aga, bespoke kitchen and wet room, surrounded by 15 acres with stables and 14 horses. A top-of-the-range Audi as well as a Range Rover sat on the drive. Their two children were privately educated and they holidayed in the Caribbean and Dubai.

By 2006 their incomes had dropped, but their outgoings hadn't. To add to the problem, their properties were all heavily mortgaged, with little or no equity remaining. With another child on the way, they didn't want to worry their families.

'There was definitely a sense of shame”, Deborah continues. “I remember feeling that I'd failed in some way. If I didn't have the material wealth or the ability to borrow money, then who the hell was I? I hate to admit it, but I think there was an element of saving face. Being secretly poor but having this outwardly wealthy lifestyle took its toll on my mental health and, in 2007, I had a nervous breakdown.”

The Risbridgers have faced up to their situation and dealt with it, but they are the middle-class exception rather than the rule. The Risbridgers now live in a modest cottage in Dorset, with their children at the local school. The big house, horses and smart cars are gone, yet Deborah continues: 'We are so lucky now because we have so much – three healthy, thriving children, a comfortable and affordable home in beautiful countryside and a lovely circle of friends, many of whom we've discovered have been through the same financial hardship as us. We will never borrow beyond our means again, but I'm grateful for the experience as it has made me a better person.”

Like the Risbridgers, Susannah Mimms, 47, and her husband David appeared to have it all – a big house, smart cars, two children at private school, a full-time nanny and regular holidays. Their careers took off in the Noughties when they were earning over £250,000 between them. Then, in 2007, tenants in their buy-to-let property did a bunk without paying rent, leaving £30,000 worth of damage. Soon after, David was made redundant and their lives collapsed.

“We kept our troubles from family and friends for a long time because we didn't want to worry them, but also it was about keeping up appearances,” says Susannah, “We especially didn't want the kids' friends to treat them any differently because we were poor. I can't deny, either, that we'd got used to a certain lifestyle and that was very hard to let go of. We managed to come to an arrangement with the school over the fees, we dressed well, we saw the same friends and acted as though we were still rich. By the end of last year, the stress of trying to repay our debts and hang on to our home proved too much. […] Telling my parents was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do because I felt like such a failure having to ask for financial help”. […]