Is Your Dad Unemployed? So is Mine

My father has been a salesman his whole career. A few years ago he was fired from a job where he grew the market for a particular product from $8 million to $25 million. They decided they didn't need him anymore. I figured that given what he did at the company, the numbers would speak for themselves and he'd have no trouble getting a new job. Instead what happened was that he was unemployed for a couple years, then underemployed.

After almost two years jobless, he interviewed for a job that seemed pretty good, and took it really hard when he didn't get it. Watching one's father go through this is traumatic. (Not to mention what it was like for him.) I mean, this is a smart, hardworking guy whose work made money. And none of that made a god damn difference. Why should I expect my future to look different, at all?

I think a lot of us still haven't woken up to the way things are now - it seems like you just never know what is going to happen, tomorrow your goose may be cooked. And the reason why doesn't have to make sense, at all. It's hard to have hope for the future this way. One day, I'll be considered to be too old to write code. And that will be that.

I have watched my father go through this as well. 2 masters degrees under his belt, +35 years of programming experience, self employed contractor for around 15 years.

He has and will travel across the US for any assignment that made sense. He has worked for a lot of well known large organizations.

He too is unable to find work. It has been hard for me to watch my father give so much of himself for his family and now he is unable to find a source of income to pursue his own hobbies now that his kids are on their own.

I have had to talk with him about settling down and retiring, even though he was not ready. He still loves what he does and he is good at it by all accounts.

It is as if he is giving up a part of himself. I tell him he now has the time to do what he wants, to build what he wants, but to him it's not the same. He wants to be a productive member of society. The rejection is hard.

I too feel that ageism is a live and well.

I am trying to learn as much as I can from this. One thing for sure is to make sure you are prepared for anything. Save as much as you can while your young. I am trying hard to accomplish this while I can. Who knows I may even start my own business or at least grow more of what I have. Nowadays it is hard to rely on just one source of income.

There always seems to be a lot of discussion about how young people are fairing in the economy but of greater concern in my view is how older people are fairing.

A combination of a lack of preparedness for retirement and long bouts of unemployment when you are in your 50's and 60's seems like a recipe for disaster for a lot of people.

It seems like home ownership is a huge factor here. Several studies have shown that home ownership correlates with higher unemployment. Owning a home greatly decreases mobility and can cause you to stick to a region far longer than is necessary. I can't help but wonder how things might have been different for the OP's father, if after the first layoff, he had chosen to sell his home and move to another market experiencing growth and extremely low rates of unemployment [0].

My father also struggled for several years after moving back to Brazil, where ageism is alive and well. He had tons of experience, even founding his own company, being its CEO and growing it to 300 people back in the 90s when that was a much harder thing to accomplish. He then ran another company as a CEO. Right now he is just beginning to do reasonably well again as a consultant, but he had to work hard to diversify where he gets work from. In his case it is his aging mother that keeps him in Brazil instead of returning to the US to a market that is more likely to employ him. He doesn't have the luxury of an option that will afford him mobility like people with a home to sell do. For those with that luxury, selling your home makes sense. Wishful thinking that long bouts of unemployment can't happen to you is a naïve and dangerous.

[0] http://www.bls.gov/web/metro/laummtrk.htm

This is very tough. I've seen my dad struggle through the same. He's been without a stable job since 2010. He'd sent out dozens of resumes daily for the last 4 years. He recently got a contract, and hopes this will turn into a full employment one day. What seemed to change his luck was that he stopped claiming 25+ years of direct relevant experience on his resume, and changed that to 6+ years. He got an offer within a week of doing that. That, and an improving economy seemed to have helped.

My father is 80 this year and still works 4-5 days a week. He was a commercial banker until he got a golden handshake at around 60. He retired for about 5 years but got bored and since then has been working as a book keeper / accountant for a small company.

He is probably luckly, because his friend owns the business where he works, but I am impressed nonetheless.