Another Christmas trying to line up a job

By Bo Emerson

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

When Carol Gross was penciling plans for her future, being unemployed at Christmas wasn’t part of the picture.

But after a year and a half without work, this 47-year-old architect is still at the drawing board, trying to make a blueprint for success in a sketchy job market.

This is the season of parties and presents, yet for many Atlantans the recession threatens to chill that holiday spirit.

D.J. Clark, an architect intern who was laid off in March, said this year her 10-year-old will learn that Santa can have money problems too.

“Santa,” said her colleague Jeffrey Hirschhorn, “is unemployed.”

Clark and Hirschhorn are part of an informal group of out-of-work architects and designers, organized by Gross, who will be observing her second Christmas without a job.

As the job search has dragged on, many suffer from recession fatigue. They are looking for work, struggling to keep an optimistic outlook but fearful that their lives, and budgets, will never be the same.

“That’s exactly the way we feel,” said Carol Gross.

Metro Atlanta has lost 200,000 jobs since 2007; Georgia’s unemployment reached 10 percent last summer and has stayed there. Even more troubling: Many are staying jobless longer.

Some 5.9 million Americans have been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That means twice as many people have experienced long-term joblessness than the previous high, reached in 1983. The current economy has kept more Americans out of work longer than any year reaching back to 1948, when the government started keeping records.

Gross kept up the search for nine months, putting on her nice shoes and suit, pursuing interviews and collecting rejections. It was exhausting and dispiriting, and it was a full-time job, she said.

When she gave up looking and no longer needed the sharp clothes, she gave up shopping, an activity she once loved. As money ran low, she and her husband, Michael Gross, stopped traveling — even for weekends.

One thing she didn’t give up: Starbucks. The coffee shop became an office, with WiFi. “This is the first time I’ve ever had a Starbucks card.”

In some households, both partners are affected.

“Two years ago I stopped making money,” said Michael Gross, a mortgage broker, “and a year and a half ago she stopped making money.” He estimates they’re about six months away from running out of savings.

Becoming idled wreaks havoc with the budget, but it can also batter the ego.

“One’s self worth is usually wrapped up in what we do and our ability to contribute,” said Jay Litton, the lay leader of a faith-based job networking program in Roswell.

Those out of work for more than a year “doubt their abilities, doubt their self-worth and this has a domino effect on their family, who is counting on their emotional and financial support. The good news is that many people ‘find’ themselves during this process.”

Sometimes what they find is a strength they hadn’t known before.

Custom woodworker and general contractor Jeremy Whitmer of Canton saw all of his big jobs disappear this year. He cut back staff from four to one, and his take-home pay dropped by half.

Before, said Whitmer, 35, he was too busy to be thankful. Now he’s happy for what he has, including a small amount of savings, enough to cover tuition for his wife at nursing school. “I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy.”

Gross, a Henderson High graduate with edgy energy, said staying positive is the best alternative.

“People keep looking at me and they can’t figure out why I’m not down in the dumps. Maybe it’s just because I keep myself busy.”

Among her activities: entering design competitions (“I was getting stagnant, and I don’t want to lose my edge”) and meeting with her fellow unemployed architects once a week at the Crowne Plaza Ravinia.

During a recent meeting in the lounge at the Perimeter-area hotel, Gross and her colleagues shared tips on health insurance, potential jobs and sources for free design software.

“Here there is strength in numbers, in knowing that you’re not alone,” said Hirschhorn, a bearded former member of John Portman & Associates.

Indeed, though few have seen profits from meeting with other idled blueprinters, they’ve found the group a comforting source of holiday cheer — and low-cost gift ideas.

To create affordable gifts, Frank Diamond, 59, a transplant from Las Vegas, is doing charcoal sketches of family members. David Standard, 58, who has built spas and corporate offices in the U.S. and India, is considering baking cookies for holiday presents.

Colleagues sipped cups of coffee, sitting around a table in an empty sports bar near the reception counter. Joel Johnston, 40, a designer who’s been out of work more than a year, spoke about his alternative income stream: selling his welded metal sculptures online. Hirschhorn, 52, has taken the training to become a census worker next year.

Many first met during one of Jay Litton’s meetings at Roswell United Methodist Church, a job networking event held the second and fourth Monday nights. It’s one of Atlanta’s largest faith-based efforts to assist job seekers, and draws up to 400 visitors a night.

Litton, a regional sales manager for a data security company, coordinates the event. He says the holiday season may, paradoxically, be the best time for making contacts. “People are more approachable, there are more parties to go to in your neighborhood.”

Those connections can lead to part-time work in other fields. But seeking work outside of architecture is a possibility that troubles Pierre-Emmanuel Maeli, who worked for the same firm for 18 years before being laid off. “You don’t go into architecture to make money,” he said. “You go into it because you love doing it. We want to work in the profession that we love.”

Sometimes you have to improvise.

In the absence of any income from his mortgage business, Michael Gross, 46, began casting about for an alternative. His partner approached him with the idea of buying a bar, the Cheyenne Grill, in Atlanta’s Peachtree Battle shopping center. The partner put up the money, Gross put up the sweat equity. “I told him if things went south I’d be on the hook for half of it.”

Now Gross is working 115 hours a week, hosting karaoke and team trivia nights, replacing fixtures, hauling kegs and dealing with suppliers. “You have to try something,” said his wife. “We’re kind of like, we don’t have anything to lose.”

When the partners decided to update the bar, Carol Gross saw the opportunity to host a design competition. Her colleagues will present plans later this month, to be posted and voted upon by the Cheyenne regulars.

The Grosses have no children, but routinely buy Christmas presents for their 14 nieces and nephews. This year? “There will be a lot of love from Uncle Mike and Aunt Carol and that’s about it,” said Michael Gross.

“Carol always finds a way to wrap a present, but being a man, I struggle a little more with that,” he said. “Last year, it was a good Christmas, but it’s what you make it. You realize in years like that, that Christmas isn’t all about giving something. It’s about being with family and friends.

“Hey, I’m getting a little teary-eyed just thinking about it. Don’t tell anybody. Remember this is a sports bar.”