The $60,000 Club : Nobody Wants to Join This Growing Group That Helps Unemployed Professionals
Two weeks ago, Willie Crosby joined the $60,000 Club. She’d gladly give up her membership tomorrow.
Crosby qualified for the club by losing her job in January as a testing engineer at a Camarillo telephone systems company. Last Tuesday, she and 60 other unemployed professionals held their monthly meeting at the group’s clubhouse--the state unemployment office in Simi Valley.
“Looking for a job is the hardest job there is,” said Crosby, 48, of Thousand Oaks. “What I’ve gotten is a group of people who are here to help me.”
Sponsored by the state Employment Development Department, the $60,000 Club is a self-help and support group for white-collar workers who have been turning up in growing numbers in the state’s unemployment lines.
The club’s name is taken from the average income of its 170 members, who, in better times, earned from $35,000 to more than $100,000 a year.
Since August, the membership roll has nearly doubled, reflecting the recession that pushed California’s unemployment rate to 7.4% last month. Construction and agriculture have been the hardest-hit industries, but more than 41,000 high-tech jobs, many of them executive and managerial, have also been lost in the state in the last year.
Program Coordinator Madeleine Brockwell said nearly half of the club’s members worked in the aerospace industry. Others were employed in electronics and communications as engineers, accountants and computer specialists. Last week, a developer whose business went under because of the real estate slump signed up, Brockwell said.
The average age of the members, most of whom were laid off, is nearly 50. Many are out of work for the first time in their adult lives.
The meetings are informal, but some men wore tailored suits and wingtips. Several women dressed in navy blue suits, heels and pearls.
“There’s a lot of talented people in this club,” said Alice Walsh, 55, of Simi Valley, who took early retirement in late January as a systems analyst at Lockheed’s Burbank plant rather than relocate to Georgia. “They’re not here because of their performance, but because of plant closures or cutbacks.”
“All of a sudden, the rug was pulled out from under them,” said Tony Precopio, 41, of Calabasas. Precopio lost his $54,000-a-year controller job with the L’Hermitage hotel chain in September. “It’s not their fault, but it’s still demoralizing.”
The Simi Valley group is one of 24 state-sponsored job clubs. Since 1987, the EDD has set up chapters at unemployment offices in areas with high concentrations of white-collar businesses.
Dawn Butcher, the club’s volunteer trainer, leads five half-day classes for new members on inventorying their accomplishments, writing resumes and letters, selling themselves over the phone and interviewing and negotiations.
Members can use the unemployment office’s computers to update and improve their resumes and can call prospective employers on office phones at state expense. Brockwell said the expenses are essentially reimbursed when club members return to work and resume paying payroll taxes.
The club, which is run and managed by the members, sends out a profile bulletin to 1,000 employers each month with a brief rundown on each member’s education and career experience.
It also is organizing a “reverse job fair” for its members March 25 at a Westlake hotel. Employers representatives are invited to the semiannual job fairs to review members’ resumes and interview them on the spot if they choose.
Securing a new job generally takes a month for every $10,000 in annual income earned.
With the economy faltering, club members said job searches are taking even longer. They said employers are taking a harder look at applicants, sometimes interviewing them half a dozen times, rather than the normal two to three.
Many club members have used savings to cover home mortgages and their family’s living expenses, while also relying in many cases on their spouses’ income and a maximum $210 in weekly unemployment benefits.
Ken Mercer lost his job as computer services and installations manager at Gibraltar Savings in September when the federal government sold the failed savings and loan in pieces to Security Pacific and Great Western banks, he said.
Mercer, who earned nearly $60,000 a year, said he has sent out 200 resumes. He said the banking industry is weak, and the insurance and health-care companies that he contacted are inclined to hire people with experience in their specific industries.
“As a support function, this club is very beneficial, since you’re in with people in the same position as yourself,” said Mercer, 50, a married father of two from Moorpark. “But things take so long. It’s wearing on my family.”
In an address Tuesday called “Changing Focus,” Jolynn Feinstein urged fellow club members to consider shifting careers. She said most professionals develop skills that could qualify them for jobs in other fields.
“How many of you can say honestly that you only wore one hat in your last position?” said Feinstein, a former Pacific Bell customer service trainer who earned an M.B.A. from Pepperdine University. “Do you really want to go back to exactly what you were doing before?”
David Hendon, 49, of Simi Valley came to California from Ohio five years ago to work at a relative’s construction company. When business began falling off last year, Hendon joined the club. He also took a temporary job placing advertisements for a tobacco company.
Last month, Hendon landed a position with Drake Beam Morin, a firm hired by employers to teach people being laid off how to market themselves for new jobs.
“Once I got into the job club, that flipped a toggle for me,” said Hendon, who once worked at a county government personnel department in Ohio. “I was assisting people with resumes and helping them out on interview techniques. The club gave me a chance to practice what’s turned out to be my trade.”
