Colt Phipps and the plight of jobless professionals
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Henry Blodget at Clusterstock asks a legitimate question: ‘How to employ the 5+ million Americans who have lost their jobs in the past two years, especially those who used to work in real-estate, automotive, and finance.’
But boy, does he pick an unsympathetic example in his blog post on the issue. Blodget cites 41-year-old former Phoenix mortgage broker Colt Phipps, who had told his story to the New York Times.
A mortgage broker for 15 years, Phipps says he lost his job two years ago. He lost his home in a foreclosure at the end of 2007. Now he and his fiancee are living with his mother.
Phipps says:
‘I’m beyond bored at this point. I check the Internet for jobs every morning, but I apply and never get a response. It’s frustrating. I have no idea how many other people are applying for the same job. I take the dogs for a lot of walks, too. I can’t do much socially because money is tight, so I’ve been somewhat isolated, like a monk. I like golf, but I haven’t been able to play this whole time.’
Blodget writes:
‘The mortgage hangover will take years to work out, and many of the jobs in the industry are gone for good. So, too, for jobs in other areas of real estate (construction, brokerage, home-equity, appraisal, inspection), car-making, and Wall Street. ‘So, what is Colt going to do?’
Uh, some of the commenters on Blodget’s post have some suggestions that Phipps isn’t likely to appreciate, after he whined about his mother’s 1,100-square-foot house being ‘crowded.’ The house he lost, he said, had 5,000 square feet of space. He also said he has resisted the idea of taking $10-an-hour jobs to focus on landing something better.
Some readers focused right in on the wretched excess of Phipps’ now-foreclosed home. As one wrote: ‘When, in our long history, has it been ‘normal’ for a single man to live in a 5,000-sq ft house?’
Wrote another: ‘What did Colt do with all the money he was supposedly making? Spend it? And if his business was mortgages, then couldn’t he see his income and the housing market drying up in time to sell the house and step aside? How did we get to the point where we became so lazy, so complacent and so entitled?’
And one more: ‘He’s been laid off for 2 years already? It’s time for him to take a $10.00/hr job.’
Phipps, by the way, also has told his story to USA TODAY and to NBC. So he already has had vastly more media exposure than 99.9999% of the unemployed out there.
-- Tom Petruno