Trading Down: Laid-Off Americans Increasingly Taking Pay Cuts - And Kissing Their Old Lives Goodbye

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Trading Down: Laid-Off Americans Increasingly Taking Pay Cuts - And Kissing Their Old Lives Goodbye



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/19/trading-down-long-term-unemployed_n_850220.html

NEW YORK -- Susan Goscewski spent 30 years climbing the professional ladder. It took little over two years of unemployment for her to tumble back down.

Cast out of the workforce in December 2008 following the financial meltdown, Goscewski, 59, never expected to go for so long without a job. She had three decades of steady employment history and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon, one of America's top business schools. Her last position, as director of development for a nonprofit, paid $90,000 a year.

Last month, she finally found a new job: as a classroom tutor at a bookkeeping training center, working 20 hours a week for $15 per hour. Even if she works 50 of 52 weeks at that rate, she'll make just one-sixth of her 2008 salary.

"In this field, in this particular organization, I will never see what I've made before," Goscewski said quietly. "And I -- have I accepted that? I'm quite angry about it."

[Ozymanithrax]

1. Gutting labor and the middle class will be one of the enduring...

results of the great recession. We are moving to third world wages. Unions should expand to become real international organizations. A strike in once country is a strike in all countries.

Corporations became international a long time ago. It is time that Workers of the world really united, or our wages will continue to plummet.

[lector]

2. It does hurt.

My wife and I have gone from 200,000 a year to 65,000. After a major medical issue our savings have been depleted.( co pays suck )
We will probably never see the old days (as I call them ) again. The bright side is it's allot easier to care for our 2,00 Square Ft. home on a 1/4 acre lot than the 3,000 on 2 acres we had.

[grasswire]

3. lucky you

comparatively to many many here

[road2000]

4. I am Susan.

With 40 years of steadily climbing salaries, I was laid off in October of 2009 at 59... a senior manager making in the neighborhood of what Susan made.

However, I am pathetically grateful for the year of "Obama bucks" which supplemented Ohio unemployment, and the 15 months of subsidized COBRA.

Now, by another form of grace, I've qualified for SS disability. I didn't want to do this at 61 -- I wanted to work and sent out hundreds of resumes, all to little or no avail. Susan is probably a victim of ageism, as I feel I was.

It is very difficult not to feel guilty over the situation. It is also very difficult and perplexing to rejoice as Medicare coverage looms closer. But I can pay for my house, my taxes, groceries and other necessities (as long as I don't get really sick without insurance coverage). So I am indeed lucky. I just never thought being older and sicker would be a condition to celebrate.

[woofless]

5. Weird, ain't it?

I often find myself grateful for my emphysema, because without it I would surely be on the street. Social Security Disability did just what it was designed to do in our case. It saved our family and our lives.

Woof