Over 50 and Out of Work has just testified before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Our testimony consisted of a minute of introduction, followed by a three and a half minute video clip (below), and a few minutes of discussion. We also submitted longer, written testimony, which is linked to at the end of this post.
Here’s the video we showed:
And here’s what we said:
“Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member and members of the committee for giving us the opportunity to talk about Over 50 and Out of Work at this morning’s hearing.”
“For the past 16 months, filmmaker Sam Newman and I have traveled across the country using video to chronicle the stories of unemployed older Americans, almost all of them middle class. We have conducted 100 interviews with individuals who are currently jobless, including steelworkers, bankers, IT project managers, autoworkers, carpenters, engineers, fishermen and office workers. Their three- to seven-minute videos can be seen on our website, but for today’s hearing, we prepared a short video that includes 21 of our interviewees and highlights many of the issues revealed by our multimedia documentary project.”
“Let’s take a look at the video now” (http://vimeo.com/25488585).
“Before I continue my oral testimony, which is an abbreviated version of our submitted written testimony, I want to clarify that our interviewees were not pre-screened or pre-selected. Their powerful and moving eloquence about their own life and experiences is unrehearsed and unscripted.”
“We focused the video you just watched on many of the issues that have emerged out of our multimedia documentary project: job loss and the erosion of job security, financial hardship, strained marriages and family relationships, foreclosure, lack of health insurance, dependence on children or on one’s parents to help defray mortgage and living expenses and the inability to pay for children’s college education.”
“The job search results of our 100 interviewees mirrors the results of an ongoing national unemployment survey that is being conducted by the center for workforce development at Rutgers University. Only seven out of our 100 interviewees have found full-time jobs at salaries comparable to what they earned previously. Most of our interviewees are severely underemployed, struggling to make ends meet, and approximately one-third are still without any job at all.”
“Overall, our project dispels the myth that unemployed older workers are not trying to find jobs and prefer to rely on unemployment insurance to survive. They prove to be persistent and resilient, but thwarted by the current dearth of available jobs.”
“But the most powerful theme that emerges from our documentary project is the shock that older middle class Americans experience when they realize that they are no longer “set for life.” The collapse of the housing and financial markets often eroded the value of their homes and savings even before they faced the pain and dislocation of losing their jobs.”
“Now, they are struggling to get back to work, trying to reinvent themselves and compete for jobs in a depressed labor market while facing the double hurdles of age discrimination and a bias against the long-term unemployed. They are recalibrating their expectations downward, both for their own futures and for the futures of their children and grandchildren.”
“They are fearful that they will not be able to hang onto their middle class status, despite their desire and determination to return to work, and afraid that the American dream, which they worked hard to achieve, is slipping away both for themselves and for their families.”
The hearing was covered by ABC and will be available online at the HELP Committee website. We hope to have video of our testimony on our site soon.
In addition to the oral testimony, we submitted a much longer written document detailing the themes and conclusions that we have uncovered over the course of this project. Below is a short summary of the written document, which can be read (or downloaded) in it’s entirety here:
And here is a short summary of the written testimony:
Since February of 2010, filmmaker Samuel D. Newman and I have been traveling across the country using video to chronicle the stories of older unemployed Americans, almost all of them middle class. We conducted 100 interviews with individuals who are currently jobless, covering as broad an array of professions and occupations as possible, and we concentrated our interviews in states with the highest rates of unemployment.
Out of these video interviews, we created Over 50 and Out of Work (www.overfiftyandoutofwork.com), a multimedia documentary project. For today’s committee hearing, we prepared a short video testimonial that includes 21 of our interviewees and highlights many of the issues revealed by our project.
The most powerful theme that emerges from our project is the shock and pain that older middle class Americans experience when they realize that they are no longer “set for life.”
They are frightened and often overwhelmed by the financial setbacks and consequences they encounter as a result of job loss. Decades of structural changes in the U.S. economy, accelerated by the Great Recession, have resulted in the highest rate of unemployment among older middle class workers ever recorded.
The consequences as told by our interviewees include: the erosion of job security, discouragement in the job search process, financial hardship, strained marriages and family relationships, foreclosure, lack of health insurance, dependence on children or on parents to help defray mortgage and living expenses, and the inability to pay for children’s college education.
Economic data alone cannot convey the multigenerational pain that unemployment and its repercussions have created among older middle class Americans. Some will never recover. Many of our interviewees talk about hunkering down and getting by, rather than about anticipating better times ahead. The traditional American expectation of a better future for themselves and their families has been upended, if not reversed.
Surprisingly, despite the ongoing hardships that they encounter as a result of unemployment, our interviewees speak eloquently about their belief that we can solve the economic problems of the United States and restore the American dream for the middle class.
Comments
........At a time when weve got some of the greatest income disparity in the United States since the Gilded Age Villager David Brooks thinks were not going to be able to solve the problem with our deficit unless seniors and the middle class are ready for some shared sacrifice. Which in Villager speak means fixing those problems on the hides of those who can afford it least while the rich keep their tax breaks..Brooks does agree that we need to raise taxes on the rich to some degree but of course qualifies that with the typical talking point that no matter how high their taxes were raised it would not fix the deficit problem..And like every other Republican out there he pretends our Congress would ever actually vote to close the tax loopholes for the rich and not just end up sticking it to the middle class instead in the name of fiscal responsibility while their big money donors keep their deductions in place..I would love to see David Brooks have to spend a few days in some senior citizens shoes with an expensive medical condition living on a fixed income instead living off of his wingnut welfare he relies on weekly to sell Americans on horrid economic policies that do nothing but make sure the rich get richer while the rest of the country sees their jobs being shipped overseas their standard of living being lowered and their social safety nets being dismantled..Someone needs to send David Brooks the charts in this post from Matt Yglesias and ask him why in the hell seniors or the middle class should be being asked to sacrifice any more than they have already given the income disparity were seeing in the United States right now -- . Im sure hell think its horribly unfair and its class warfare that anyone dares to point out that the have mores in this country arent going to be happy until we have no middle class left and most of us are living in squalor but somehow I expect hell get over it since its his class thats winning.. I agree with that this stinks of nothing but an attempt to make the now defunct mess of a deficit commission and their co-chairs recommendations look reasonable. .MATTHEWS Im with you.
During the past generation the American middle-class family that once could count on hard work and fair play to keep itself financially secure has been transformed by economic risk and new realities. Rocked by rising prices for essentials as mens wages remained flat both Dad and Mom have entered the workforcea strategy that has left them working harder just to try to break even. Even with two paychecks family finances are stretched so tightly that a very small misstep can leave them in crisis.