4
Workers over 40 struggle in job market
Deborah Boles at her hair salon on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, N.Y.
To view this content, Javascript must be enabled and Adobe Flash Player must be installed.
Deborah Boles cuts Steven Greenberg's hair at her salon on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, N.Y.
TEXT OF STORY
Stacey Vanek-Smith: A growing proportion of the unemployed in this country -- and that's nearly 10 percent of the population these days -- is 40 and over. Tonight on PBS stations, "Frontline" visits a hair salon in New York, where clients talk about what it's like when you're trying to find work when you're over 40. "Frontline" producer Arun Rath reports.
Arun Rath: Deborah Boles has been running her hair salon on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for more than 20 years. Her clients are rich bankers, poor actors, and just about everything in-between. Most of them are over 40. She says none of them expected to be struggling financially at this point in their lives.
DEBORAH BOLES: Every day, every one of my clients sit in my chair and talk about the economy.
SCOTT SAMBADE: We lost a deal in Miami, which was not so good.
EMMA NELSON: We don't have a lot of money. I don't know how else to put it.
CHRIS CALBI: Last week, I had an unemployment check and two notices of foreclosure from two different banks on my home.
That was Scott Sambade, Emma Nelson, and finally Chris Calbi, who at one time made a fortune selling audio-visual systems to big businesses.
CALBI: I was very successful. I was successful beyond any... anything I had ever imagined actually and had built a company that was close to $100-million-a-year sales company.
Calbi had to sell his business in the early 2000s. He took a lower paying job, and was laid off last year. He's 58 years old.
Steven Greenberg is the founder of Jobs 4.0. It's a Web site that helps workers over 40 find employment.
STEVEN GREENBERG: It's taking older workers about 30 percent longer than younger workers to find a job now. While they have great skills at the job they've done over the years, those skills don't extend to how to find a job.
Greenberg says many face job discrimination, and that's getting worse as the economy deteriorates.
Chris Calbi says he's sent out hundreds of resumes, and been on about 10 interviews, but had no luck.
CALBI: Whenever I go for the interviews, they go very well. I always think that I'm going to get the job. And most often, nearly every time, not only don't I get the job, but I don't even get a response.
Leaning back in his chair at the salon, Calbi says that like so many people of his age, he barely recognizes the business world anymore.
In Boston, I'm Arun Rath for Marketplace.
Vanek-Smith: "Close to Home" airs on "Frontline" tonight.
If you know someone who is looking for a job or need a second job to maintain their income.
Please checkout this website:Find a Better Job Faster at http://www.sjcjobs.com/default.aspx?id=Portee64
Response previus e- mail from ~ UT ~ Most of the American very hard working people and I see day in day out when you have limited amount of savings and when you loose your job it very difficult to sustain the quality of life you have been use to and most of the americans are very naieve and trust worthy fair weather good times to foreign origins citizen not all but the most of them How I know it I am foreiger my self we came for dream and vision and greater freedom which is un matched any where in the world so my dear ill herathed foreigner national before you critizise America and Americans be thankfull with deep gradutude rest of your life to american hard working TAX payer pour millons if not billions to your un gratefull nations both allied and non allied and to ungrdefull citizens of those nations so again it is the naive american tax payer made what you are with khowledge and wealth....BE THANKFULL, NOT UNGRADEFULL.and without any shame your critisizing America and the Americans .
Is it true that Vivek Wadhwav and others are privately discussing plans for what to do with all the displaced American workers, to ship them off somewhere and let imported foreign workers have their vacant houses?
I think Vivek may be right. I know most Americans are too lazy to get good education and do not deserve homes. If the empty houses can be given to another workers from a country where they work hard to succeed then that can be better for economy. Many Americans are only going to be in the houses for a short time until they cannot qualify to find more work so it is good that the government would help them find a place to stay. If a house is available it would make it easier to bring over relatives and they can study to make it succeed here too. I think that if Americans complain it is only their fault and they should work hard even if they are not good at technical or science jobs.
