Will Manage for Food

  • MARK PETERSON/CORBIS SABA FOR TIME

    Pounding the Pavement: Job seeker John McCormick dons a sandwich board in NYC

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    Dusting off an old dream, O'Grady applied to become a New York City police officer. After 10 months of unemployment, he started training at the Police Academy last July. "There's the 40% pay cut and the late hours, and of course the fear factor," says Liz, an administrator for a hedge fund. She gazes at her husband as she cradles 3-month-old Brennan. "But after 9/11, strangely, I feel fearless. Like this is our way of taking a stand. And I see how happy he is."

    This is not happening just in New York. Across the country, laid-off white-collar workers find themselves reassessing the career goals that once defined them. Pedro Canahuati, 28, had dropped out of college and zoomed up through the ranks to become director of operations at an Internet data — center company headquartered in Denver. "I had been in the industry for about nine years and had quite a bit of experience," he says. "I always felt that it was the people who didn't have the experience and couldn't maintain their value in the company who would be laid off." Canahuati, who lives in Washington, lost his job last year. He has moved in with his girlfriend to save money and is temping as a Web designer while weighing a return to school.

    To be sure, white-collar workers out of a job often suffer less, financially speaking, than do those with less income and training. Educated workers tend to be married to others like themselves, who often also hold jobs that come with health insurance. Many have savings, equity in a home or well-off parents. Their experience and contacts help them in their search for another high-paying job. And they can often afford to get more education for a new career. "If all else fails," says David Wyss, chief economist with Standard & Poor's, "there's always law school."

    But if happiness is largely a matter of expectations, losing a job can be hardest, psychologically, on those who have the farthest to fall. Nathan Wolf had five degrees, 34 years of experience at IBM and a new career as a patent lawyer — or so he thought. Laid off by a law firm in Reston, Va., he finds it "embarrassing" to have to network. The job hunt is stressful, despite the support of his wife and five children. "Let's be very blunt about it," he says. "I'm 61, and I'm probably not seen as the best investment, even though I carry so much other experience and stature."

    Since she was let go from her job as a producer for a San Francisco Web publisher, Jamie Delman, 43, dines mostly at home on canned chili. She can't travel to see a dear friend's new baby, nor can she continue her habit of treating friends to dinner and movies. "I spend a lot of time in cafes because coffee is cheap," she says. "I avoid talking to certain friends because I get tired of the questions like, 'Are you looking? Where have you looked?'" Delman has given up on re-entering the gutted tech field; she is pursuing grant-writing jobs for nonprofit groups and getting by on monthly unemployment checks.

    Unemployment insurance was something people like Delman never imagined they would have to think about. But she now relies on the $1,320 monthly income to pay for health insurance. Unemployment benefits are based on income at the old job, and higher-paid workers are more likely to qualify. But the amount varies dramatically from state to state, and even those who merit $1,720 a month — the maximum in such generous states as Pennsylvania — can find it a painful comedown from a salary five or 10 times that amount. Most states provide benefits for only 26 weeks, a period of unemployment that half of white-collar workers today exceed. Congress passed a law in March that temporarily extended the period by 13 weeks. The law expires on Dec. 31, but Congress looks likely to approve another extension. "White-collar workers whine," says Wyss. "Moreover, they vote."

    After the initial stages of denial and fear, many laid-off workers report feeling unexpected relief. "It's like the pressure that mounts when you have a winning streak in baseball," says author Po Bronson, who interviewed scores of laid-off tech workers for his forthcoming book What Should I Do with My Life? "With each success you slowly become more risk-averse because you get more and more scared of failing," he says. Experiencing the career failure that a layoff implies is "ultimately liberating."

    The swift rise and fall of Felicia Holden as a project manager matched that of her employer, a New York City Internet-design and architecture company. When the call came last summer, "it was devastating," she says. Still, the experience proved invaluable — mainly as material for her first stand-up comedy act. Soon the slender thirtysomething was pursuing a lifelong ambition, cracking jokes in her Georgia twang before notoriously unforgiving audiences at comedy clubs around the city. "I felt at that point that I had nothing to lose."

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