Jobless Professionals Learn How to Ask: Paper or Plastic?
December 8th, 2009Via: AP:
Mara Proctor used to design limestone hearths and columns for luxury homes near Kansas City, drawing on her college education and six years of training.
These days, she’s leading customers around a store that sells sculptured snowmen and Santa figurines.
It isn’t by choice. Until a few weeks ago, Proctor was among the record 5.9 million Americans who have been jobless for at least six months. Now she belongs to a subset of that group: Out-of-work professionals and managers, engineers and teachers who have turned, in desperation, to holiday-season jobs as sales clerks.
Retailers report a surge in applications this year from professionals who had never applied for such jobs before.
“You’ll find Wall Street stock brokers and small business owners trying to find temporary retail jobs during the holidays,” said Ellen Davis, vice president of the National Retail Federation.
The pay is low, the jobs temporary. And the work is hardly equal to their experience or expertise. Yet the nation’s unemployment crisis left these people jobless so much longer than they’d expected that many count themselves fortunate to have anything.
