The unemployed white male professional

[MaggieMae]

Some shocking details reported by Newsweek on the current state of white male professionals who found themselves unemployed as a result of the economic meltdown. The report was picked up by all major news outlets, so you can read their comments online as well.

Can Manhood Survive the Recession? - Newsweek

Capitalism has always been cruel to its castoffs, but those blessed with a college degree and blue-chip résumé have traditionally escaped the worst of it. In recessions past, they’ve kept their jobs or found new ones as easily as they might hail a cab or board the 5:15 to White Plains. But not this time.

The suits are “doing worse than they have at any time since the Great Depression,” says Heidi Shierholz, a labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute. And while economists don’t have fine-grain data on the number of these men who are jobless—many, being men, would rather not admit to it—by all indications this hitherto privileged demo isn’t just on its knees, it’s flat on its face. Maybe permanently. Once college-educated workers hit 45, notes a post on the professional-finance blog Calculated Risk, “if they lose their job, they are toast.”

So what's going on in the corporate boardrooms? Corporate America's profits rose 29% in 2010, the fastest growth in more than 50 years but the improved results have yet to trickle down to most employees, even the highly educated, well-paid, upper-level professionals.

I guess this report also puts to rest the allegation that the chronically unemployed are simply the slackers who have gotten used to being couch potatoes living off unemployment compensation.

 

[Wonky Pundit]

This trend is just an unfortunate example of supply and demand. Corporations are figuring out how to get more done with fewer suits. Or with cheaper suits living in China and India...

 

[Samson]

This trend is just an unfortunate example of supply and demand. Corporations are figuring out how to get more done with fewer suits. Or with cheaper suits living in China and India...

This is why Government Employment should be attactive to suits: You're job won't move to China

 

[william the wie]

I was suspicious of the value of a college degree early on. Despite a vo-tech HS degree with As and Bs in my specialty I lost out on janitor jobs to EE Ph.Ds at local electronics firms in 71 so I enlisted in the navy. When I was soaking up GI bill in the late 70s and early 80s I checked discounted returns on investment on degrees and found out that returns were negative except for scholarship students. The returns were listed in tables in works freely available in the counseling office. I am only surprised that it took this long to sink in.

 

[xsited1]

There's not much to this story. Men 45 and older have always had trouble finding commensurate employment after a layoff. It's worse now because this recession is so bad. There. I said in 2 sentences what the Newsweek article said in 5 pages.

 

[psikeyhackr]

What White males failed to make the decision that double-entry accounting should have been MANDATORY FOR EVERYBODY in our schools for the last 50 years?

How is it that John Kenneth Galbraith could write about the planned obsolescence of automobiles in 1959 and all of the other White male economists could say nothing about it since then?

The economics profession created this problem with misinformation over the last 50 years.

Nobody is trying to explain the workings of a planned obsolescence economy. They did not exist before 1900 so economic history is irrelevant.

So we have unemployed White males that have been managing the manufacture of JUNK. Of course the educators have not been explaining what has been really going on. What do English Literature teachers know about physics and technology anyway?

psik

 

[Trajan]

Some shocking details reported by Newsweek on the current state of white male professionals who found themselves unemployed as a result of the economic meltdown. The report was picked up by all major news outlets, so you can read their comments online as well.

Can Manhood Survive the Recession? - Newsweek

Capitalism has always been cruel to its castoffs, but those blessed with a college degree and blue-chip résumé have traditionally escaped the worst of it. In recessions past, they’ve kept their jobs or found new ones as easily as they might hail a cab or board the 5:15 to White Plains. But not this time.

The suits are “doing worse than they have at any time since the Great Depression,” says Heidi Shierholz, a labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute. And while economists don’t have fine-grain data on the number of these men who are jobless—many, being men, would rather not admit to it—by all indications this hitherto privileged demo isn’t just on its knees, it’s flat on its face. Maybe permanently. Once college-educated workers hit 45, notes a post on the professional-finance blog Calculated Risk, “if they lose their job, they are toast.”

So what's going on in the corporate boardrooms? Corporate America's profits rose 29% in 2010, the fastest growth in more than 50 years but the improved results have yet to trickle down to most employees, even the highly educated, well-paid, upper-level professionals.

I guess this report also puts to rest the allegation that the chronically unemployed are simply the slackers who have gotten used to being couch potatoes living off unemployment compensation.

profits rise on effiency cuts to MM, I am a WMP and well, I got the axe........they dumped my work on others or let it lag, OR hired a recent college grad (RCG) and took the savings.