Rightfully Unemployed

by Dennis Green

Eight million Americans are out of work, another two million jobs never showed up to create growth in the first place. But Wall Street is doing fine, so long as the headlines aren’t filled with news about reform of the banking and financial industry. So what’s going on?

Perhaps those folks who are now unemployed were working at jobs that weren’t really necessary or productive. Perhaps those jobs-jobs-jobs were just part of the economic bubble, like the dot-com bust companies that didn’t survive that earlier big POP!

Companies downsize because they can. They can economize by eliminating certain positions that either duplicate services or accomplish things that are outmoded. If sales, exports, profits fall, they look for fat to trim off the bone.

In the early ‘80s, I was working as “Manager of Promotions & Market Research” at Miller Freeman Publishing. I negotiated a cordial and beneficial departure from the firm, in part because they were hurting, losing money from currency exchange rates and from a frankly bloated payroll, including my generous paycheck.

I managed five other people, and when the dust settled, three of us were gone. The three remaining didn’t do the work of five, but probably did the work of three and a half of us, without, of course, my genius and ironic sense of humor.

The people who stayed employed during the Recession of the Eighties worked much harder, and during the Eighties and Nineties, even the Oughts, productivity in America rose impressively. For the most part, wages and benefits remained stagnant, and most corporations made out quite well.

Two parallel economies developed — a real economy that made things, and a hollow economy that made money, supposedly to finance that real economy, but gradually only for its own sake. Such a world cannot be sustained.

At Miller Freeman, I made things. Ads and subscription renewal letters and brochures. I created concepts and copy, worked with artists who created layout and design, and with printers who made the final products possible. When I left, I took two thing with me — my ability to make things and my savvy about office politics.

And with them, I made a new life for myself. I found that many small and mid-sized companies couldn’t afford to keep someone like me on staff fulltime. But they could afford to contract with me for $15,000 or $50,000 worth of my time and energy. With even a handful of such clients, I made out quite well.

Likewise, I found that very often, for sensitive marketing and advertising projects, they needed an outsider to do the work, someone who was not captive of internal office politics and the same old perspectives. Someone who could offer a fresh look at the brand, at the customer, at the market for their services or goods. So I made a valuable contribution as an independent consultant and sub-contractor.

How many of today’s unemployed have the initiative or skills to do that, I have no idea. But I suspect that most of them know, in their heart of hearts, that their job loss is not an injustice. And that their next employment may well also be fragile and undeserved.

©2010 Dennis Green