Tweet
August 30, 2009
Generation B
At 58, a Life Story in Need of a Rewrite
By MICHAEL WINERIP
NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y.
MICHAEL BLATTMAN, 58, took a prudent path to a successful business career. Armed with an M.B.A., he started with the federal government, working at the General Accounting Office and Federal Reserve, before moving to the Sallie Mae student loan program, where he rose to be director of national sales.
From 2001 to 2008 he was a senior vice president for a private student-loan company and at his high point earned $225,000 a year in salary and bonuses, he says. He also taught business courses at the University of Maryland; lived in a 4,000-square-foot home in upscale Potomac, Md., and drove a Mercedes.
And then, in short order, this stable life came undone. When his younger of two children was almost ready for college, Mr. Blattman asked his wife of 25 years for a divorce.
“We’d just grown apart, we had a different opinion on mostly everything,” he says. “Life is short — you got to do what makes you happy.” Since he worked out of his home, he could live anywhere, and decided Florida would be the place to start over.
But soon after, in January 2008, he lost his job. His company was shutting down much of its student loan business. Still, Mr. Blattman wasn’t worried. He received a $188,000 severance package and says, “I thought I’d find another job quickly, and actually wind up ahead.” He is well regarded in his field. Jim Murphy, a former president of the New York State Financial Aid Administrators Association, calls him “innovative, dependable, an asset to any organization.” Tony Doyle, a dean at Widener Law School, describes him as “a highly capable, dedicated professional.”
None of that matters in this economy. Mr. Blattman has been out of work ever since, 18 months. He moved to New York because he thought prospects would be better than in Florida. (“I couldn’t go back to Maryland, tail between my legs.”)
But after applying for 600 jobs, he’s had just three interviews — two of them over the phone. At the only in-person interview, for a position supervising international admissions at a Westchester County college, he was asked about salary. “I said: ‘Whatever you’re paying, I’ll take it. I understand it’s a different world now, I can adapt.’ ” The job went to someone half his age, he says.
Being single, he wants to be in New York City, but lives in a studio apartment in this middle-class suburb, because rents are cheaper. He let his online dating membership lapse because, he says, once women figured out he was unemployed, it killed things. He can walk to shopping, but often drives his secondhand S.U.V. to a grocery store two towns away just to have someplace to go. “If I walk to the store, I’m back in 10 minutes, and then what?” Last Monday, asked what he had planned for the week, he said, “As of now, I have zero planned, not a thing.”
He has enough to live on for two to three years and knows he’s luckier than many. Still, he wakes in the night, scared. “If I don’t find work by then,” he says, “I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Unemployment for middle-aged workers like Mr. Blattman is the highest it’s been since data was first collected 60 years ago. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, joblessness is worse for men over 45 (7.7 percent in July) than women the same age (6.9 percent). And while the middle-aged are still more likely to have jobs than younger workers, once people Mr. Blattman’s age are laid off, finding a new job is harder. In 2008, laid-off people over 45 were out of work 22.2 weeks, versus 16.2 weeks for younger workers.
Like steelworkers in the 1980s recession, Mr. Blattman was part of an industry, financial services, where entire companies and divisions collapsed and disappeared. “It wasn’t anything about me personally,” he says. “The world around me just changed overnight. Like East Germany, one day it was there, next day gone.”
Several factors were at play: credit markets contracted; a scandal over questionable ties between lenders and college aid offices put private lenders on the defensive; and Congress cut the subsidies paid to private lenders for issuing federally guaranteed loans, reducing profitability.
Mr. Blattman has many people to commiserate with, but few to network with. “Ninety percent of the people I worked with lost jobs,” he says.
After his layoff, he bought two suits, “to be prepared for the glut of interviews.”
He’s never worn them.
Companies insist applications be sent via e-mail. “I’d say 95 percent never even acknowledge receiving my application, let alone telling me I was rejected. No letters, no courtesy, everything is so chaotic and rude.”
Even headhunters stopped responding. “One tried to help for a few weeks, but disappeared and didn’t return phone calls or e-mails.”
“I’d see ads for business jobs, teaching jobs, that were my exact résumé and not even get a call. So many are out of work, if they want a guy with polka dots on his head, they can find polka dots.”
Just getting people to understand what he did for a living — setting up loan programs for colleges — is often not possible. “I just say I’m a sales guy, I can sell ice to Eskimos. My problem is, I have no credential. I’m not a lawyer or doctor, not in pharmaceuticals, not an expert in women’s fashion. I have no broker’s license or insurance certificate.”
“Here’s the reality,” he continues. “I used to be somebody, I had a job. Not anymore. Everything ground to a halt. No sense of purpose. No self-esteem.”
Filling the days is a chore. He goes for the $2.99 breakfast special at a nearby diner every morning, just to get out and be around people.
A few times a week, he rides the train into Manhattan, to a museum or street fair, just to be out. “I’ll walk from Union Square to the Upper East Side, walk through Central Park and just get lost and see where I come out.”
His father, a truck driver who survived the Depression, instilled the importance of hard work in his children by planting the fear of homelessness, and Mr. Blattman cannot walk by a street person now without wondering if this could be him.
When he’s out, he feels guilty he’s not home, hunting the Internet for job prospects.
His health insurance expired July 31, so he bought a new policy that starts Sept. 1, and is keeping his fingers crossed he makes it through August.
He fears he’s too old to find work and too young to retire.
He got a call from a headhunter last week; one of his former employees had listed him as a reference. She asked what he was doing and said she might have a job for him. “We’ll see,” he says. “I’ve got to the point — no one’s going to do that for me. It’s all about me making it happen. I can’t rely on the old world to take me back.”
With so much time on his hands, he decided to take a stab at writing novels. He’s finished a thriller about a consumer loan officer and is working on making contacts in the writing world. “I have befriended publishers, published authors, agents, taking certain people to lunch,” he says. A few hours after saying he had nothing going last week, he received an invitation to a book party in SoHo and planned to build a day in the city around it.
During his walks, he makes notes on his BlackBerry for his second novel, which, he says, is half finished. It’s about a 58-year-old unemployed man who lives in a studio apartment the size of a hotel room, and every morning goes to a diner, where he falls for a waitress who’s the daughter of Holocaust survivors.
It’s a love story, he says, and while he’s not yet sure exactly how it will turn out, his intent has always been to give it a happy ending.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/fa....html?_r=1&hpw
At 58, a Life Story in Need of a Rewrite
MICHAEL BLATTMAN, 58, took a prudent path to a successful business career. Armed with an M.B.A., he started with the federal government, working at the General Accounting Office and Federal Reserve, before moving to the Sallie Mae student loan program, where he rose to be director of national sales.
From 2001 to 2008 he was a senior vice president for a private student-loan company and at his high point earned $225,000 a year in salary and bonuses, he says. He also taught business courses at the University of Maryland; lived in a 4,000-square-foot home in upscale Potomac, Md., and drove a Mercedes.
And then, in short order, this stable life came undone. When his younger of two children was almost ready for college, Mr. Blattman asked his wife of 25 years for a divorce.
“We’d just grown apart, we had a different opinion on mostly everything,” he says. “Life is short — you got to do what makes you happy.” Since he worked out of his home, he could live anywhere, and decided Florida would be the place to start over.
But soon after, in January 2008, he lost his job. His company was shutting down much of its student loan business. Still, Mr. Blattman wasn’t worried. He received a $188,000 severance package and says, “I thought I’d find another job quickly, and actually wind up ahead.” He is well regarded in his field. Jim Murphy, a former president of the New York State Financial Aid Administrators Association, calls him “innovative, dependable, an asset to any organization.” Tony Doyle, a dean at Widener Law School, describes him as “a highly capable, dedicated professional.”
None of that matters in this economy. Mr. Blattman has been out of work ever since, 18 months. He moved to New York because he thought prospects would be better than in Florida. (“I couldn’t go back to Maryland, tail between my legs.”)
But after applying for 600 jobs, he’s had just three interviews — two of them over the phone. At the only in-person interview, for a position supervising international admissions at a Westchester County college, he was asked about salary. “I said: ‘Whatever you’re paying, I’ll take it. I understand it’s a different world now, I can adapt.’ ” The job went to someone half his age, he says.
Being single, he wants to be in New York City, but lives in a studio apartment in this middle-class suburb, because rents are cheaper. He let his online dating membership lapse because, he says, once women figured out he was unemployed, it killed things. He can walk to shopping, but often drives his secondhand S.U.V. to a grocery store two towns away just to have someplace to go. “If I walk to the store, I’m back in 10 minutes, and then what?” Last Monday, asked what he had planned for the week, he said, “As of now, I have zero planned, not a thing.”
He has enough to live on for two to three years and knows he’s luckier than many. Still, he wakes in the night, scared. “If I don’t find work by then,” he says, “I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Unemployment for middle-aged workers like Mr. Blattman is the highest it’s been since data was first collected 60 years ago. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, joblessness is worse for men over 45 (7.7 percent in July) than women the same age (6.9 percent). And while the middle-aged are still more likely to have jobs than younger workers, once people Mr. Blattman’s age are laid off, finding a new job is harder. In 2008, laid-off people over 45 were out of work 22.2 weeks, versus 16.2 weeks for younger workers.
Like steelworkers in the 1980s recession, Mr. Blattman was part of an industry, financial services, where entire companies and divisions collapsed and disappeared. “It wasn’t anything about me personally,” he says. “The world around me just changed overnight. Like East Germany, one day it was there, next day gone.”
Several factors were at play: credit markets contracted; a scandal over questionable ties between lenders and college aid offices put private lenders on the defensive; and Congress cut the subsidies paid to private lenders for issuing federally guaranteed loans, reducing profitability.
Mr. Blattman has many people to commiserate with, but few to network with. “Ninety percent of the people I worked with lost jobs,” he says.
After his layoff, he bought two suits, “to be prepared for the glut of interviews.”
He’s never worn them.
Companies insist applications be sent via e-mail. “I’d say 95 percent never even acknowledge receiving my application, let alone telling me I was rejected. No letters, no courtesy, everything is so chaotic and rude.”
Even headhunters stopped responding. “One tried to help for a few weeks, but disappeared and didn’t return phone calls or e-mails.”
“I’d see ads for business jobs, teaching jobs, that were my exact résumé and not even get a call. So many are out of work, if they want a guy with polka dots on his head, they can find polka dots.”
Just getting people to understand what he did for a living — setting up loan programs for colleges — is often not possible. “I just say I’m a sales guy, I can sell ice to Eskimos. My problem is, I have no credential. I’m not a lawyer or doctor, not in pharmaceuticals, not an expert in women’s fashion. I have no broker’s license or insurance certificate.”
“Here’s the reality,” he continues. “I used to be somebody, I had a job. Not anymore. Everything ground to a halt. No sense of purpose. No self-esteem.”
Filling the days is a chore. He goes for the $2.99 breakfast special at a nearby diner every morning, just to get out and be around people.
A few times a week, he rides the train into Manhattan, to a museum or street fair, just to be out. “I’ll walk from Union Square to the Upper East Side, walk through Central Park and just get lost and see where I come out.”
His father, a truck driver who survived the Depression, instilled the importance of hard work in his children by planting the fear of homelessness, and Mr. Blattman cannot walk by a street person now without wondering if this could be him.
When he’s out, he feels guilty he’s not home, hunting the Internet for job prospects.
His health insurance expired July 31, so he bought a new policy that starts Sept. 1, and is keeping his fingers crossed he makes it through August.
He fears he’s too old to find work and too young to retire.
He got a call from a headhunter last week; one of his former employees had listed him as a reference. She asked what he was doing and said she might have a job for him. “We’ll see,” he says. “I’ve got to the point — no one’s going to do that for me. It’s all about me making it happen. I can’t rely on the old world to take me back.”
With so much time on his hands, he decided to take a stab at writing novels. He’s finished a thriller about a consumer loan officer and is working on making contacts in the writing world. “I have befriended publishers, published authors, agents, taking certain people to lunch,” he says. A few hours after saying he had nothing going last week, he received an invitation to a book party in SoHo and planned to build a day in the city around it.
During his walks, he makes notes on his BlackBerry for his second novel, which, he says, is half finished. It’s about a 58-year-old unemployed man who lives in a studio apartment the size of a hotel room, and every morning goes to a diner, where he falls for a waitress who’s the daughter of Holocaust survivors.
It’s a love story, he says, and while he’s not yet sure exactly how it will turn out, his intent has always been to give it a happy ending.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/fa....html?_r=1&hpw
Comment