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Ferraro had hoped that San Francisco, and his gig at Current, would mark the beginning of a new and more secure phase in his life. After years of scraping together freelance work in film and acting, he had at last found a company he wanted to stay with, and had cash to take on some of the trappings of a conventionally stable adulthood: the PT Cruiser, the one-bedroom apartment. "I got myself into a new situation," he said. "I wasn't so afraid to get HBO2. The iPhone? It's $50 more, but fuck it, I've got to have the iPhone." He paused. "And then when I got laid off I couldn't cover my overhead."
For some, particularly in industries subject to long-term destabilizing factors that pre-date the current downturn — such as old and new media — the Bay Area's unemployment epidemic has dispelled any last, cherished illusions of having a steady job in the first place.
John Henion, a 32-year-old Oakland resident and friend of Ferraro's, was also laid off from Current TV in November. He has health-insurance coverage through his long-time girlfriend, and little trouble picking up freelance work in video production and editing. Unemploymentality, the blog he started with Khadder, another laid-off Current employee, was getting more readers, as well as some attention from the press. (Khadder, in an interesting twist, has scored a new job with a company impressed by her blog entries.) Henion has decided to stop stressing about returning to an office.
"My philosophy is that I can spend all day writing cover letters or writing résumés, or I can just build a brand," he says. He adds, ruefully, "I used to think there was job security in media." As workplace casualties pile higher, one has to wonder just how many industries the sentiment will eventually extend to.
Alexis Mansinne is not waiting around to find out. She has decided to pursue a career path in the classically stable mold — returning to school for a master's degree and becoming a guidance counselor in a public high school. No more will she market glossy magazines or jetset among large cities. She's betting on the idea that sitting face to face with awkward kids will bring more lasting satisfaction than cubicle culture.
"It was cool to say what I was doing," she muses late on a recent Monday morning, sitting at the same kitchen table in her Sunset apartment where she received the news of her layoff. "So much of my identity for so long has been wrapped up in the brand on my business card. And now I don't have business cards. So what does that make me?"
There's no easy answer to that question. One might say — as Mansinne has — that having no business cards simply makes her funemployed, another exiled young office bee enjoying a well-deserved vacation on a downsized income. But that's not really true. "There's a lot I don't like about not having a job," she says. "I call it funemployment and I talk it up. But it's tough. My income now is half of what it was." More psychologically significant than the income loss, she says, is the morbid condition of "feeling ineffectual in the world."
She laments that not having enough to do gives her the blues. "There's only so much I can do in a day working on the wine tour, and then there's no more work to do," she says. "It gets kind of depressing."
On this Monday, Mansinne is getting ready to help her younger brother move into a new apartment. Then she's headed to Los Angeles — not, like Ferraro, to look for work in a bigger job market, but to look after her grandmother, who is coming home from the hospital after treatment related to a broken femur. When she returns, there will be graduate counseling programs to check out, the GRE to study for, and, eventually, some form of work to find. Since Mansinne plans to apply to grad school this fall, she won't be able to start working toward her degree until the fall of 2010, and will need a source of cash once her unemployment checks run out.
Even under COBRA, Mansinne is paying close to $400 per month in health-insurance premiums. She wants a new health plan. This consideration is driving her back to a company that employed her during her college years: Starbucks.
From Devil-Wears-Prada magazine marketer to Starbucks peon to high-school guidance counselor, with some bagels, bongos, and blogging along the way. Behold the path of the funemployed — equal parts relaxation, reflection, optimism, and disappointment. "It's totally bizarre to me to think I'm going to go back to Starbucks," she says. "I was really on a career path. And then it all came to a crashing halt." She pauses. "I think I like it better this way."
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