The Jobless White-Collar Worker--a Fish Out of Water

The stucco building at the corner of Commonwealth and Lemon in Fullerton is a place where What’s-Supposed-to-Happen collides with What-Sometimes-Does. It’s a state unemployment office and, unfortunately, business is good these days.

Unemployment used to be something that afflicted only your ne’er-do-well uncle, but not anymore. Nowadays, anybody can be out of work or, to be more precise, 65,400 people in Orange County, as of the latest figures. A year ago, the county’s unemployment rate was 2.7%; today, it’s 4.7%.

Still, it was not company in which O.G. imagined himself years ago when he got a degree in engineering and went to work in the aerospace industry. With a college education and specialized training, he thought he was golden.

Today, at 39 and with two kids, he’s out of work.

Same tune with Norm, who’s 46 and a salesman. He’s been out of work since last July. For a while, his idea of success was having a job. Now, he counts it as a good week if he’s able to line up a job interview.

The two men, neither of whom wanted to be fully identified, talked Tuesday about being unemployed in the prime of life.

“Certain days are real bad for me,” O.G. said. “Sundays are real bad, because Sunday afternoon you realize that on Monday morning you have no place to go.”

“Sunday nights are the most depressing time of the week for me, too,” Norm said.

A past victim of the volatility of the aerospace industry, O.G. has been laid off before. This time, he’s been out of work for 2 1/2 months. He kicks himself for not seeing the industry trend coming and is thinking of relocating outside California.

“When you first get laid off, there’s a sense of relief,” O.G. said. “You say, ‘It’s happened, now it’s behind me.’ Then the gravity of the situation starts to hit you, and it’s ‘Hey, where am I going to get my next meal? How am I going to support my family?’ ”

“I’ve found situations where all of a sudden time starts flying by quickly,” Norm said. “Month after month after month, and I’m saying, ‘What the heck have I done the first four months of this year?’ And it seems like it’s been insignificant because I haven’t attained the goal. I don’t want to answer, ‘Yeah, I failed today.’ ”

O.G. nodded in agreement. “I was meeting with some friends last week and I had an interview this week, and I didn’t want to tell them, because if I didn’t get the job, I’d have to tell them and that’s a hard thing to do. It’d be easier to say nothing.”

It’s that kind of tap dance on a person’s psyche that makes the pain of unemployment extend beyond the loss of income, said Judy Peterson, the coordinator of a state program designed to help unemployed professionals find work. The “job club” in her Fullerton office, one of two in Orange County and 24 statewide, numbers about 350, three-fourths of them men. The professionals do the networking and counseling for each other and, in general, form one big support group.

“Their whole identity is connected to work, and they’re like a fish out of water,” Peterson said of white-collar professionals suddenly laid off. “Many of them have large mortgages, kids in college, all kinds of real heavy obligations. I’ve seen men cry, just from there being more pressure than they can handle and not knowing what to do about it. Jobs are really not out there like they used to be.”

The recession, trends in certain industries and the management restructuring of many companies have contributed to the spurt of white-collar unemployment, Peterson said, which is two to three times higher than overall jobless figures.

O.G. said he still finds it hard to believe that he’s in an unemployment office. “It seems very unnatural. Everything you’ve ever been taught--that you go to college and work hard and do your job and everything will be hunky-dory. . . . And then that whole world just gets turned upside down. It’s very unnatural.”

The ultimate whammy of unemployment is that it can demoralize a person just when he or she needs to be at their best--for a job interview.

So, Norm said, he often has to pump himself up and assure himself that things will work out.

And with that, he had to head off Tuesday afternoon for a job interview--with a company that markets a product out of his normal area of sales expertise. Accordingly, he said, he spent some time in a library researching the company.

He left to go to the interview, then stuck his head back in the room. “Wish me luck,” he said.

“Good luck,” O.G. said. “I hope we never see you again.”