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By MICHAEL E. KANELL
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Recession’s tide is lapping at the lawns in Kings Cove.
With about 260 upscale houses surrounding a community lake, tennis courts, swimming pool and barbecue pit, the east Cobb neighborhood is not a place you ordinarily expect to find economic distress.
But people who were vice presidents and professionals of various stripes now find themselves — in record numbers — like their blue-collar brethren: laid off, pumping out resumes and phoning up old acquaintances.
The shifting current has reshaped life at home. A few months ago, these one-time breadwinners were gone from the neighborhood at dawn. Now they juggle their job search with household duties, making breakfast, shopping, getting the kids off to school.
Perched at his desk in his first-floor home office, Derek Raymer scrutinizes the Internet in search of openings, then painstakingly puts together resumes and letters. “It can pretty quickly rack up eight or nine hours,” he said.
Raymer, 44, an information technology longtimer, was let go Jan. 30, three weeks after his boss had shifted him to another division. “I was told we were busy, and they needed me,” he said. “Then they downsized 20 percent of the company.”
As evening falls, his wife arrives home from her job as a Publix cashier. She works 40 hours a week, and with Derek in the job hunt, a painfully large part of her paycheck is siphoned into medical and dental coverage for the couple and their two children.
They have always tried to save — they drive older vehicles, take modest vacations and have a conservative mortgage. And on this Monday evening, they will eat at home — like every other night nowadays.
Like the Raymers, <span style="font-weight: bold">most</span> people in Kings Cove <span style="font-weight: bold">did not </span><span style="font-style: italic">overreach in home-buying</span>. The houses are two or three decades old, not recently erected McMansions, and have typically sold for $270,000 to $400,000.
Nor are the residents people who have dived into debt while maxing out credit cards, said neighbor Diane Lore, 45, who was laid off in early January from a public relations agency and now works for Danya International.
<span style="font-weight: bold">That makes their sudden unemployment seem almost like a betrayal.</span>
“They walk the straight and narrow and they expect the contract to hold,” Lore said. “The contract is that they live the right life and life treats them right. And the contract is broken.”
<span style="font-weight: bold">White-collar workers have historically been less vulnerable to layoffs than less-educated Americans</span>. And while blue-collar workers are still victims of job cuts in vastly greater numbers, white-collar workers are seeing more pain than they usually do in a downturn. And both groups are losing ground at a similar, frightening pace.
<span style="font-weight: bold">For workers older than 25, with less than a high school diploma, the jobless rate last month was 12.6 percent — up 70 percent in the past two years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.</span> <span style="font-style: italic">The rate for college graduates was 4.1 percent — up 95 percent. About 1.9 million college grads are now unemployed.</span>
“For workers without a college degree, while the unemployment is dramatic, they are not near their historic highs,” said economist Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute. “While the more highly educated workers are more sheltered, they are closer to historic highs in unemployment. And while they are less likely to become unemployed, when they do [become unemployed] they stay unemployed for longer.”
In Kings Cove, most of the layoffs have come in recent months. The assumption is that something will turn up before too long.
Chris Nelson, 35, sold an online business last fall. He is looking for a position as a business analyst or quality assurance manager. “I had a couple of phone interviews, but it’s tough right now,” he said. “You’ve got to do more than submit resumes online.”
He is antsy, but not too anxious yet. “I am optimistic as always. I would really hope that I have something in the next two months.”
<span style="font-weight: bold">He knows people who are embarrassed about being unemployed — enough so they haven’t applied for jobless benefits.</span> He knows his situation is not unique — not even in his line of sight.
“On our street there are a number of job seekers,” Nelson said. “I can think of four or five within two blocks.”
John Dougherty, 52, calls himself “newly minted unemployed.” He was laid off the first week of February, joining the ranks of Georgia’s nearly 413,000 unemployed.
As senior vice president in charge of trading operations for a Norcross brokerage, he was targeted when the company was sold and the new owners noted he was third-highest paid.
“It is the first time I have been laid off when I didn’t have something lined up already,” he said. “This time, I tried to ride the wave a bit too long.”
He looks to his past for perspective. “I grew up pretty poor,” he said. “My family lived in the same apartment in New York City for about 50 years. Maybe it is a cock-eyed optimism, but I think something will come, sooner or later.”
Despite his positive outlook, at first he felt guilty — worried that he was suddenly not doing enough for the family. Yet just as suddenly, he was available for household duties such as getting 13-year-old Devon off to school.
“He used to be gone by 6:15 or 6:30 every morning,” said his wife, Stacey Dougherty. “Now, if I want to sleep in, I can.”
A one-time portfolio manager on Wall Street, Stacey has not drawn a paycheck since their daughter’s birth. She looks to change that with the launch of a travel-themed magazine.
“I had hoped in a couple of years to replace John’s income and let him wind down,” she said. “I just didn’t know I’d have to ramp it up so quickly. The next 18 to 24 months will be tough, but I think it’s doable.”
In decades of work, John forged contacts all over the country. Now, he is getting in touch. “My fear is — can I find something at the same level of a company? That is the question.”
While he searches for an answer, he puts out bagels and juice in the morning for Devon, then ferries her to the bus stop. When he returns home, he makes sure not to distract the entrepreneur in the extra bedroom.
There is hope in the air since the first issue of Stacey’s new magazine hit the streets last week. John laughs when he says its name: ‘Where2Now?’
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