Down and Out in Holland

If you haven't yet, you probably will hear about Gregg Rosen. He has become the most visible spokesperson for the "99ers" - the people who still have yet to find suitable work after running through not only all of their state's unemployment benefits but all four tiers of Federal emergency unemployment compensation. (For those of you who don't know this term - and I'd be surprised that you don't if you're a job-seeker - the designation comes from the maximum number of weeks of unemployment compensation available under both the Federal and state UC programs in most states; in some states with less generous state programs, this number is lower).

Their ranks are larger and more diverse than one might expect, and Rosen himself illustrates the point, for on the face of it, he doesn't look like he is doing all that badly. He still lives in a spacious, well-appointed home in the Bucks County community of Holland. From the reports I've seen about him so far, the biggest adjustment he has had to make is in foregoing medicines he needs to treat a chronic condition. He certainly wasn't living on the edge of disaster after losing his job as a six-figure-a-year marketing executive three years ago -- or at least wasn't until he found out that Bernie Madoff had blown his nest egg along with those of thousands of other well-off clients in a giant Ponzi scheme. But even now, almost two years after Madoff's scheme collapsed, he does not appear to be breaking a sweat over things like making the mortgage payment or where his next meal will come from. Yet to hear him tell it, he faces plenty of challenges trying to survive after the end of unemployment benefits.

Some commenters on the PBS NewsHour website complained in response to a recent interview with Rosen that he is not a terribly sympathetic figure because he still lives in comfortable surroundings. Actually, Rosen is all the more useful as a symbol of long-term unemployment because he is not visibly destitute. He reminds us that this time around, persistent unemployment is not the exclusive province of the unskilled, the talentless, or the downtrodden. Among the 5 percent of all college graduates who are unemployed are people like Rosen who, despite having knowledge, skills and experience galore, find themselves still jobless after all these years.

By Sandy Smith

Sandy Smith has been blogging for PhillyJobs.com since 2010. In addition to launching award-winning newspapers and newsletters at the University of Pennsylvania and Widener University, Sandy is a veteran writer whose articles and essays have appeared in several local and regional media outlets, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia CityPaper, and PGN, and on several Web sites. He is also an active participant on several discussion boards, including PhiladelphiaSpeaks.com, where he posts as “MarketStEl.” He has been supporting himself through a combination of freelance and part-time work and unemployment compensation since early 2009 and is himself an active job-seeker. Read more of his posts on PhillyJobsBlog.com and follow him to Beyond.com for more job opportunities.