Hard Times at the Top.

   According to an article in July 14 Wall Street Journal,  out of work CEOs face even stiffer odds at ever finding a job comparable to their previous employment than do lower level employees.  The article, "Out-of-Work CEOs Find Openings At the Top Are Few, Callbacks Rare,''  makes the same point that Barbara Ehrenreich's book, Bait and Switch made a few years ago:  That once you have reached middle management or higher, if you ever get laid off, your career is probably over.  Recruiters want energetic young contenders who are still looking ahead to the peak of their career--not "has-beens" who are looking back. Even if you are willing to accept  a position at far lower pay, it won't be offered.    Finding re-employment is tough at any level--but the higher you climb the corporate ladder, the tougher it gets.
     The same issue of WSJ has a piece describing a lawsuit where the former CEO of Lord & Taylor, (formerly owned by Macy's) is now suing Macy's over cutbacks in his retiree medical care.
   Those of us on or near the bottom of the corporate heap have always known that for the union members on the shop floor, an employee is just a piece of meat, or perhaps a machine--to be used, worn out, and thrown away.  But we always imagined that it was different for management, especially top management. Turns out we were wrong. If you're in management, you may be a more expensive piece of meat, but you're still just meat---don't ever delude yourself.
   My wife and I are now both retired, so the burden of finding work has finally been lifted from my shoulders.  Yet I bore this burden for 40 years. As a skilled construction hand, even in good times, work was intermittent at best.   And during the farm crisis of the 80s, I went a whole decade without finding any work in my home state of Iowa.  What work I did find was hundreds of miles from home. And in 1982, I put 16,000 miles on my car driving around the country looking for work and found not one job.  I was in every Southern state except Arkansas at least twice--and the south is where the work was.
    So if you're out of work, believe me brother--I have been there.  But you may take some carrion comfort in this:  If when times were good, you had worked harder and climbed to a higher position,  your present job search would not be easier--it would be harder.  What helped me get though the 80s with my mind, my marriage, and my life intact was the continuous awareness that my unemployment was due to macro-economic factors that I had not caused and could not cure.
    Imagine that a fly is on the windshield of a bus, and that the driver of the bus,  being drunk,  drives the bus off the road and into a creek. Should the fly feel that the accident is his fault?  The economy is the bus and we are the flies.  So don't take it personal.