For the Tristate's youngest workers, the good old days were times of multiple job offers, fancy dinners out and late-model cars. Today, they talk about packing lunches, low-cost entertainment and vacations spent at home.

Ryan Clark planned to remodel his Symmes Township home, but that's on hold. (Brandi Stafford photo) | ZOOM |

        The recession of 2001 is the first that many people 30 and younger have ever faced as working adults. For some, it's not sitting well.

        Not only is economic turmoil a psychological shock, but these young adults are seeing more job losses than any other age group. U.S. unemployment overall was 5 percent in October — but 7 percent for workers age 20 to 29.

        “Their entire lives they've known nothing but prosperity,” says Marcia J. Frost, assistant professor of economics at Wittenberg University in Springfield. “They've known nothing but rising incomes, nothing but a rising stock market, nothing but stability.

        “Psychologically, that causes a lot of problems.”

        Ryan Clark, 30, of Symmes Township — who once job-hopped looking for “a bigger game” — is now grateful just to have a good job. So is Hebron's Troy Bit ter, 28, who has seen the once-abundant competing job offers and phone calls from headhunters dry to a trickle.

Malik Spencer, a software entrepreneur, pays the bills with a job at PlanetFeedback.com. (Ernest Coleman photo) | ZOOM |

        Malik Spencer, 29, thought his software start-up would make him an overnight millionaire, much in the 1990s tradition of the Yahoo and eBay.com founders. Last year, he took a programming job — realizing that he couldn't yet make a living off the firm, let alone make a million.

        Florence resident Erika Biga, 26, once was welcomed in a high-tech firm with nothing but a biology degree. Now, she's out of work and can't find a job in the field that she has since gained valuable experience in.

        “I had no multimedia experience, and I could talk myself into that job. Now it's hard to talk myself into a job I know I can do.” During the last recession in 1991-92, most people who are now 30 and under were in school or just starting out with few expectations. Then came the longest economic expansion in U.S. history, during which more than 30 million Americans entered a labor market desperate for them. According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, that's about 20 percent of the total labor force.

        Companies offered extravagant signing bonuses on top of generous salaries. They beefed up benefits, offering perks such as insurance and retirement plans without the traditional delays. They came up with new freebies, like stocked refrigerators and free massages to keep employees happy, healthy and productive.

        Young workers got downright spoiled.

        “Everybody had a sense of entitlement,” says Mr. Clark, who graduated from Ohio University and entered the software sales field in 1993. “People's perceptions have been warped by that.”
       

Jobs disappearing
               The new reality is that consumers and companies are spending less money. The Gross Domestic Product (the sum of all goods and services sold in the country) shrank last quarter for the first time in 10 years.

        U.S. companies have eliminated 1.4 million jobs since January, pushing the October unemployment rate to 5.0 percent.

        Younger workers usually are out of work more than the work force as a whole, but their 7 percent jobless rate last month represented a widening gap. In October 2000, unemployment for people in their 20s was 5 percent — only 1.4 percentage points higher than the overall rate of 3.6 percent.

        In just 12 months, unemployment for the younger age group rose 40 percent.

        “Typically, unemployment tends to fall as you get older,” says Karen Kosanovich, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

        Younger people tend to be out of work more because they have fewer skills and less experience than older workers, Ms. Kosanovich says. Not only are they more expendable, they're also are less loyal and not as settled. As a result, young workers are more likely to leave their jobs on their own for personal reasons, Ms. Kosanovich says.

        Still, for those in the hottest technology, telecommunications and engineering fields, layoffs, cutbacks and downturns were practically unheard of to anyone who learned about economic conditions for the first time during the late 1990s — and who set their expectations accordingly.

        They came into the work force taking the best of three or four job offers. It wasn't unusual to start above $50,000 a year in those industries.

        They bought more homes than any generation before them, and they poured money into the stock market expecting it to go only one direction — up.

        “Most of us base our experience for the future on what we've experienced in our own lives,” Ms. Frost, the Wittenberg professor says. “Most of us don't plan on losing income. We assume that it won't happen to us — it will happen to someone else.”

        But it happened in the past year to David Michaelson, 28, who co-owns with his father American Luggage & Leather at Cooper and Kenwood roads in Blue Ash. A nationwide dropoff in travel has slowed sales at the store, even though it has lowered prices.

        Mr. Michaelson was caught unprepared, stuck trying to fund the lifestyle he'd gotten used to. He's looking into refinancing his house and has taken a second job to make ends meet.

        “I'm trying to reevaluate my financial situation for the future,” he says.

        Others are cutting back on what was arguably the highest lifestyle any generation has had when just starting out. Now, they're delaying home remodeling projects and setting limits on holiday shopping.

        Ms. Frost sees college seniors just hoping for a job offer — not necessarily one with a staggering salary and signing bonus.

        “They're ratcheting down expectations,” she says.

        Ms. Biga, a Granville native, didn't know what to expect when she graduated from Oberlin College in 1996. But she quickly learned how easy getting a job was. With no experience in technology, she landed a job at a multimedia development firm in Bloomington, Ind.

        “It wasn't difficult at all,” she says. “I did not go through any struggle to find a job the last time.”

        Within months, she switched to a competing firm for more money and better benefits. Then, she left that company and moved to Cincinnati for personal and family reasons, thinking that getting a job here would be just as easy. She was wrong.

        “The shocking thing is that I've been here two months, and I've done everything right — I've done all the networking meetings, I've done everything I can think of and I still am at a loss for leads,” she says. “The worst thing is that it's so depressing.”

        Mr. Bitter has seen friends going through the same thing in the past few years, leading him to be thankful for his information technology job at Fidelity Investments in Covington.

        But even that's come into question as brokerages across the country announce layoffs, especially in information technology departments. In Mr. Bitter's case, his recent raise was only half what he received last year.

        “There's a fear now that wasn't around three years ago,” he says. “We've been riding the wave high, now it's about to crash into the rocks.”
       

Still opportunity
               Despite the downturn, some younger workers are staying optimistic, refusing to let the shrinking economy get the better of them.

        Since graduating from Ohio University in 1992, Vince Broerman has started two companies that eventually failed. He's now on his third, a networking firm, First Tuesday.

        Part of what has been called one of the most entrepreneurial generations ever, Mr. Broerman, 30, says he still would start a company no matter what the business climate.

        “Here's why: Just because we're in a down cycle doesn't mean there isn't opportunity still,” he says. “It may not be as prosperous in the short term, but there are ways to continue surviving.”

        How to survive has just changed.

        For Mr. Spencer, it meant going to work for someone else.

        The computer programmer co-founded Systematic Software, a Web design firm, in 1997. One of its early projects, a successful virtual job fair for the University of Cincinnati, was the first of its kind in the country — and fueled Mr. Spencer's dreams of immediate riches.

        “It's done well, but not nearly as well as we'd thought,” he now says. “My expectations were probably out of line.”

        He still hopes to live off the company someday, but now knows it will take longer. In the meantime, he took a programming job with PlanetFeedback.com, and is enjoying the stability of working with what he calls a “powerful product.”

        Stability has become the key in this new work force. Like Ms. Biga, Mr. Clark once changed employers looking for something better. Then he lost his job when that tech firm eliminated its internal sales force.

        “Before, "better jobs' meant more money,” he says. “Now, "better jobs' is being defined as something more stable.”

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