March 5, 2009

The Editors, New York Times

Katherine S. Newman, professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University, is author of “The Missing Class.”
Twenty years ago, when I first started studying middle class downward mobility, the experience was as unexpected as it was unwelcome. In the early 1980s, blue collar, unionized labor was already seasoned in the ways of layoffs, but their white collar, managerial brethren were caught completely off guard.

Experienced, educated workers, loyal to the firm and confident they would live out their days as employees of Big Blue or Xerox, found themselves staring up at security guards looming over their shoulders while they cleaned out their desks and were escorted to the door.
What awaited these refugees from the middle class back then were many anxious months of empty answering machines, sympathetic but puzzled friends, and spouses and children who were not ready for downward mobility. Ex-C.E.O.’s would leave their homes in the morning dressed for work, having hid the truth from their families until they could no longer manage the lie. It was almost a relief when they put the house up for sale and began an odyssey toward a new and uncertain destination.

The skills and experience the newly unemployed bring to the table matter, but will not command the wages needed to preserve the standard of living they know.

How did they recover from this calamity? In the 80s, they called everyone they knew to ask about job leads, put resumes in the mail for every job in the want ads, no matter how unappealing. Clubs for the unemployed (founded during the Depression) had waiting lists full of Wall Street refugees. Men cajoled their spouses (many of whom were non-workers) back into the labor market, and told their kids they would have to work their way through college and take out heavy loans.

These strategies worked then, as they will work now — if by “worked” we mean landed these families on a new plateau, albeit one far below their expectations.

In today’s economic landscape, the skills and experience the newly unemployed bring to the table still matter, but will not command the wages needed to preserve the standard of living they know. Stability at a lower plane is weathered most successfully by families that pull together rather than pull apart, especially husbands and wives who avoid corrosive conflict and learn to adjust with as much grace as they can muster, to new roles as earners and house husbands.
Teenage kids who learn how to pitch in to the family coffers and help with the care of their younger siblings make a difference. Neighbors, fellow parishioners and P.T.A. contacts who are still working should remember that anything they can do to help their unemployed friends get back into the game is a blessing. Most of all, the newly jobless need to remember this maelstrom was not of their making and whatever they have to do to survive will be honorable.

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