The Silver Lining of Recession

One of my first activities every morning -- post-feeding baby, pre-coffee -- is to scan the headlines of the Wall Street Journal. Lately, it's become an exercise in masochism. Bank after bank owns up to risky investments. The stock market flirts with bear territory. Oil hits $100 a barrel. Homes are being foreclosed on. Wealthy people are even abandoning their horse farms (this actually was a Journal story). Clearly, we are in for some tough times ahead. Pundits have begun using the "R" word (recession), both in the figurative sense of feeling economic angst, but possibly in the literal sense of two consecutive quarters of declining GDP.

The business cycle is, to some degree, inevitable. Still, lay-offs and hiring freezes exact a high cost in even well-to-do and well-educated people's livelihoods and lives. One study of Stanford Business School graduates found that the class of 1988 -- who graduated right after the 1987 market crash, when the major banks weren't hiring -- not only had lower average starting salaries than the class of 1987, they were still earning less, on average, 10 years later. Likewise, many of us in the college class of 2001 wound up spending our early 20s doing far different things than we planned on in the aftermath of the Internet bust and then Sept. 11.

As we enter this new economic downturn, though, I've realized that I am actually kind of grateful for my lousy timing. After a year-long internship at USA Today, I started hunting in earnest for a full-time job in the still-dismal days of 2002. I didn't find one. Yes, I panicked. But my lack of commitments ultimately made it a lot easier to go ahead and do what I'd long wanted to do someday: move to New York and write.

Over the past five years, that move has turned out to be the right one, personally and professionally. When you have a decent thing going, the opportunity cost of taking a risk is a lot higher than when you're staring at unemployment. Even if your job isn't at risk, seeing friends being laid off can make you re-evaluate what you really want to do in life. The silver lining of a recession is that bad times nudge you to try things you otherwise wouldn't.

I was reminded of this while reading a new book called Test Drive Your Dream Job. Author Brian Kurth, founder of Vocation Vacations - a Portland, Oregon-based company which lets clients try out a dream profession for a few days with a mentor -- started his company shortly after the last economic downturn. He had wanted to start a company long before that, but he had a cushy job in the telecom business all during the 1990s. "I wanted the money. I wanted the security. I was too scared to go out on my own," he writes. Then he went to work for a dot-com start-up and, 16 months later, was laid off. Interestingly, his partner of six years was also laid off (from a different company) on the same day.

At first, this total loss of family income was terrifying. But then, "I could barely stop myself from laughing," he writes. "Finally, even I, cautious and fearful as I was, couldn't miss the message. The universe was doing what I'd been unable to do for myself: giving me the corporate boot." With no income, he simply had to figure out something else. And that something else may as well have been his own dream of starting Vocation Vacations.

Likewise, a few years ago, I interviewed Mena Trott, co-founder of the blogging software company Six Apart (whose Movable Type software, incidentally, powers the Huffington Post). She and her husband Ben also started their company after getting laid off from another internet start-up. Without the lay-off, who knows?

The reality is that humans are naturally risk averse. In Maslow's hierarchy of needs, safety and security come right after the basic needs of food and shelter. Most people find it very difficult to leave a job that pays enough to meet their immediate needs, even if they have some savings, or other resources (such as the ability to moonlight) to call upon. The uncertainty of what might happen afterwards is too great.

That's why many of us are willing to tolerate a certain level of dissatisfaction at work. A recent Conference Board survey found that fewer than 39 percent of workers younger than 25- - i.e., people who are less likely to have the mortgages and kids that keep older workers in boring jobs -- are even "satisfied" with their positions. A CareerBuilder.com survey from about a year ago found that 84% of workers aren't in their dream jobs.

Granted, finding or creating a dream job is difficult. But if you suddenly find yourself without another job, at least one barrier to attempting a career change is gone. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if some newspaper editor in the hinterlands -- more flush with cash than anyone turned out to be in 2002 -- had offered me a job. Here, six years later, I would probably not be living in New York, which is where I want to be. I probably wouldn't have gotten to do various book projects. I might even be earning less. Thanks to the 2001-2002 crunch, though, I never got to find out. And though it was tough at the time, I'm now happy for that.

Comments

[Sciguy]

I'm an old enough fogy that I have to agree with givemycountryback and cke. I did indeed go back to school, in computer science, and graduated in 2000 when I was 45. I had a terrible time getting a job - any job - in my new field. I finally got a computer-related job as a permanent temp (no benefits, no job security, no hope of becoming a "regular" with health insurance and retirement) and I got to watch as the company outsourced hundreds of jobs to Mexico and India and the Philippines. When I got canned, what was I supposed to do? I went back to school again, this time for education. Now I have a fantastic job, but it pays less than $10,000 per year, and also has no benefits.

---

It's not so hard for young folks to pack up and move to New York. For older folks, with mortgages and families (and for me, livestock), it's a lot harder to move. Also, I don't have an entreprenurial bone in my body. Starting a business is out of the question. I still have skills, but since I'm over 50, nobody wants to hire me (education is the only field where age helps). To you, a recession is a possibility of a new life. To me, a recession is a possibility of losing my job, and this time, having no alternatives.

[SonnyPV]

i appreciate the silver lining attitude; however you could say having lost your feet means never having to buy shoes. Thought our heads maybe fine in the sky our feet should be on the ground.

[Novista]

Sometimes, you reach for the brass ring, other times destiny pushes you there. At any point in your life, you have to thank good luck for where you are and know, in a moment, circumstances can change.

Back 'in the day' I threw in a job with AT&T at a time when the 'conventional wisdom' was, security for life. No such thing. I left with ten year's seniority, my work comrades aghast, and a few years later, the FCC brought the hammer down, and I know some security conscious types never recovered from unexpected consequences.

Meanwhile, I've travelled the world on job contracts, had extreme ups and downs, and never regretted any pitch that life has tossed me.

It's always good to have a backup plan. :-)

[cke]

It is tough being laid off. More if you're in your mid-50's. And doubly so if you didn't take the time earlier to prepare for alternate career paths. But all is not lost. Whatever your current expenses are, you can always lower them. And whatever you do, you can find someone who wants you to work part-time for them at it. But the days of a corporate cushy job with some pension at the end is over, dead, done.

If you're out of work, you have a precious commodity in abundance - time. Use it. Take classes at a local community college. Volunteer at some non-government agency. Network at community chamber of commerce style events. Give talks, write a blog, do pro-bono work for charities, hospitals, schools, public agencies and publicize that fact. Get involved in local policy/politics.

As you pass through this world, leave it better in your wake.

[realitytrumpsbull]

Well, by the look of things, we're going to have to do something, because economic cannibalism is going to set in here, pretty quick...eviction teams standing by...fresh back from Iraq, ready to do 'business'...

[anfractuous]

In the recent book "the Black Swan" author Nassim Nicholas Taleb would direct us to examine narratives such as yours in terms of what he calls the "cemetery": all the unsuccessful cases, operating under the same set of conditions as you, that we never hear of. All we hear about are the successes, which someone (not necessarily you) will use to demonstrate, post facto, what a genius you are. There's an unacknowledged role of luck here, although, who can say whether the greater luck is to not get canned, or to land on your feet wearing Guccis.

[givemycountryback]

While I am glad for your good fortune, I hate this post. I am 57 years old, should I move to New York and write? And tell that to all the blue collar workers who have been downsized and their jobs sent to Mexico and India. Tell it to the 405,000 families who lost their homes in 2007. This economy is in ruin, we have been sold out by the greedy corporations and the jobs aren't coming back, we'll be lucky to get a MCjob.

[Cathexis]

Sometimes, disaster does push us into taking action that ultimately improves us.

Other times though ...

Nietsche was wrong: Whatever doesn't kill us, often leaves us crippled.

[mmckinl]

A little more explanation please. Where did you get your degree? How well off is your family? I assume you are married, you say you have a child. What does your husband do? How well off is your husbands family? Do you or your husband still have college loans? Where do get your health care?

Sounds to me like you have had it pretty easy as you casually note your morning schedule.

The vast majority of people don't have the resources to move about, from the statistics most are months if not weeks from the street with a job loss or health care problem.