This past weekend, the Over 50 team traveled to California to do some shooting for our documentary.

In San Diego, we interviewed Bruce Marks, founder of NACA, Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America, a nonprofit community advocacy and homeownership organization. At NACA’s American Dream events, held in major cities across the country, NACA brings together its own financial counselors, representatives from mortgage lenders and struggling borrowers.  Working together, they hammer out affordable mortgage terms so that homeowners can meet their payments and hang onto their homes.

We learned about NACA from one of our South Carolina interviewees who faced the risk of imminent foreclosure.  NACA helped her renegotiate her mortgage and lower her monthly payments.  She made her first reduced mortgage payment this past January and, to her great relief, will now be able to remain in her home.

We have added Marks’s interview about NACA to the Experts section of our site.

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Recently, we were also invited to speak about Over 50 and Out of Work at the Bronxville Career Network monthly meeting, held in Bronxville, N.Y. by Pat Drew, one of the group’s organizers, a career coach and a former New York Times human resources director.

At the networking group’s meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 15, we screened a rough cut of the first third of our documentary, which focuses on Joe Price, a former steelworker from Weirton, W.V.

It was a terrific experience to show a section of our documentary to the members of the career network group, and we want to express our appreciation for the opportunity!

Subsequent to the meeting, Drew wrote in an email:

Thank you for sharing your powerful documentary “Over 50 and Out of Work,” about the extreme difficulties faced by those during this recession, and particularly those in their 50s.  The documentary was touching and exposed the real hardships people are enduring.  It also portrayed resilience in face of extreme obstacles…something from which we can all learn.

Thank you for sharing it with our Bronxville Career Network.  The discussion offered ways to everyone to persevere and succeed in face of adversity.

Bruce Marks, founder and CEO of NACA, Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of American, describes how the nonprofit helps homeowners renegotiate unaffordable mortages and prospective homebuyers purchase a home on affordable terms.

We were very saddened to learn that that Jessica Goldstein, one of our interviewees and wife of Brian King, passed away yesterday, Feb. 7.   Not long after we interviewed Jessica and Brian in early 2010, she was diagnosed with cancer.

The Over 50 team and community extend our deepest sympathy to Jessica’s family.

In their video interview, Jessica and Brian speak eloquently about unemployment.  Both Brian and Jessica lost their jobs in 2009 as a consequence of the Great Recession.

For a broader perspective on Jessica’s rich life, here is an excerpt from the Theatre Puget Sound blog about Jessica:

Here is an excerpt from my Feb. Stay Thirsty column:

“I feel like we’re the throwaway generation,” Mickey O., 56, said about the Baby Boomers’ role in the economy.

Despite faltering gains in the wake of the Great Recession, approximately three million older Americans remain unemployed, and this number, of course, does not capture the millions who have given up on the job search and are no longer counted or the severely underemployed who can barely scrape by or the 60-plus-year-olds who have been driven to claim Social Security benefits earlier than they had planned because they could not find jobs.

When the Great Recession began in mid-2007, fewer than 1.5 million older Americans were out of work. Episodes of joblessness for older workers at the time were typically short-lived. Seniority and years of experience shielded older employees and made them valuable to employers.

Fast-forward to now, the start of 2012. Conditions for older jobseekers are little improved, more than two years after the downturn was declared over in December 2009. The majority of older workers who lose their jobs face at least a one-year struggle to find work. Their job search often turns into a two- or three-year odyssey of financial, familial and personal hardship. Even when they are successful and find work, they generally must accept a lower rate of pay.

We are always questioned about the handful of happy endings for our interviewees: Did any of your project participants find jobs?

Click here to read more.

Lately, we’ve posted a few articles on our social media about hiring trends and tips.  The online responses have been mostly negative, which is somewhat surprising, given the challenging job market that older unemployed workers in the United States face.

The WSJ reported in a recent story that some companies are no longer using resumes to screen applicants.  Employers are requiring candidates to complete surveys or quizzes.  They are also requesting that jobseekers submit video profiles or prove that they have an online presence as a blogger or Twitterer.

Here are a couple of responses posted on our page about this hiring trend:

“Bring it back the old-fashioned way!!! Face to face!”

“It all is just giving me a headache!”

Context:

• Right now, there are over 13 million unemployed Americans and approximately three million of them are over the age of 50.  We can all agree that these figures understate the number of people who are out  of work.  The figures don’t include discouraged jobseekers who are no longer looking, severely underemployed people who are barely surviving financially, or unemployed older workers who would like to work, but have opted to claim their Social Security benefits at the earliest possible date because they couldn’t find jobs.

• It is currently estimated that there are more than four applicants for every job opening, but, of course, the reality is that the ratio is higher in certain industries and regions of the country.

•The average number of weeks that all workers are out of work is almost 40 weeks.  For workers who are 55-plus, the average amount of time is over 52 weeks.

Conclusion:

Even though the Great Recession ended according to economists in December 2009, it’s still tough to land a job, especially if you are 50-plus.  There’s no getting around this dismaying fact.

Last year, according to another WSJ story, Starbucks received 7.6 million applicants for 65,000 openings. That’s over 100 resumes per job!  Proctor and Gamble was inundated with one million applications for 2,000 jobs.  That’s 500 candidates per opening!  Human resource departments are overwhelmed by the deluge of applications and cannot evaluate them individually.

These odds are daunting, and jobseekers who are 50-plus need to find ways to distinguish themselves from the pack of job hunters.  They should seize the opportunity to use creative ways to demonstrate the value of their hard-won life experience and on-the-job wisdom, as well as their ability to stay current with industry trends and technology.

Our advice:

Embrace the new hiring trends bandwagon and get on it, however you can.

Upgrade your skills, create an online presence, make a video profile.  Differentiate yourself.  Demonstrate the power of your mature brain, which is better suited to problem solving and sifting through information to see patterns and find solutions, based on prior experience, than a younger brain.  Knowledgeable workers who can solve problems are the people companies hire.

“In the past workers with average skills, doing an average job, could earn an average lifestyle.  But today, average is officially over,” wrote Thomas Friedman in a recent NYT editorial.

Successful U.S. firms continue to find ways to be more productive with fewer workers.  Some of our interviewees figured out  labor market trends and the moral of Friedman’s story because they had first-hand experience with unemployment and suffered financially and personally.

Kevin Lincoln, 59, a former Wisconsin paper mill worker, lost his job as a result of the Great Recession.  He was among our first interviewees for Over 50 and Out of Work:

“I was so shocked when I went back up to converting, but in my last couple of days, they took me back up there to see where the company had gone.  I was so shocked, because when I first started, there was 25 people in a room.  30.  All making on one old machine.  Now, I go in there, there’s machinery everywhere and tracks and that, and they’re all computerized, and there’s three or four people in the same room.  But they outproduce that 30.”

Two years ago, when we met Kevin in Green Bay, he was on the verge of completing an associate’s degree as well as working part-time at a sporting goods store, but very disheartened about his future full-time job prospects.  He expresses his frustration in his video interview, but Kevin has turned out to be one of the few Over 50 interviewees who has been able to return to a full-time job with benefits, and he now works for NAPA, where he continues to advance in the company.

A couple of weeks ago,  the wordpress blog that underlies our site was hacked and our pages began to look like advertising for an online pharmacy.  Our site was giving us conniptions, and we apologize for any confusion the hack caused.

Neither Sam nor I have the expertise to fix the problem, and our site developer was also stumped.  We sent a desperate email to our interviewee Ken Wadland, a software development expert.  Although Ken is currently traveling in Cambodia, he responded promptly, diagnosed the issue and referred us to a wordpress specialist who fixed the hack for us.

Thank you, Ken!

Twelve percent of our interviewees have already responded to our two-year follow up survey.  Email answers came from New York, New Jersey, Florida, Michigan, Rhode Island and California.

On average, the 12 interviewees have been out of work for more than two years, and the majority of them remain unemployed or severely underemployed.

All 12 of these interviewees now have a lower standard of living than they did before they lost their job as a consequence of the Great Recession, and most of them do not expect to regain the financial health they had attained before they experienced joblessness.

One of the 12 has been able to return to a full-time job with benefits, although she is making two-thirds of her former salary.

One became an entrepreneur and founded her own company.

Three are working as independent contractors without benefits at a rate of pay 33 to 50 percent less than they earned previously.

Two are working at one or more part-time jobs without benefits.  They are earning a small fraction of their prior salaries.

One, who did return to work full-time after his initial job loss, decided to voluntarily retire, cut back on his spending and live on his savings and investments.

One, who receives Social Security, is still interviewing and seeking full-time employment.

Three are currently not employed for serious personal or familial health reasons.

We asked our interviewees to comment on the American Dream in the follow up survey and here’s one response:

“You know, as a kid of the 60′s, the “American Dream” never resonated for me. If anything, the American Dream is defined for me by something Bill Clinton used to say about working hard and playing by the rules and getting ahead. I’ve worked hard, I’ve worked pretty much non stop since I was in my late teens (breaks for college and a few years as a stay at home mom). I played by the rules, paid my taxes, blah blah blah. I was a good employee, was appreciated for the work I did with support, praise and monetary reward and my lifestyle increased as my pay increased. I never cheated anyone to get ahead, never played games with other people’s lives (banks and sub-prime mortgage-backed securities – I’m pointing at you!) and still I was whacked upside the head. I’m so lucky to have suffered as little from my jobless experience as I did, but I pay constant attention to jobless rates and news, knowing that I still have friends that haven’t been able to turn it around. The American Dream should be that we all have the right and the chance to get ahead by working hard and playing by the rules.”

As our followers and site visitors know, we have completed 100 interviews with Americans who are 50-plus and unemployed, and now we are working on a documentary that will explore more fully the issues raised in those interviews.

We began this project almost exactly two years ago, so we are now conducting a survey of our 100 project participants and asking them the following questions:

• Have you been able to return to work?

• If so, how long were you unemployed?

• Please summarize what impact unemployment has had on you and your family financially, physically and emotionally.

• If you have been able to get back to work:

1. Are you working full-time or part-time?
2. How do your current pay and benefits compare to what your received previously?
3. What tips or advice would you give to other older workers who are trying to find a job?

• Overall, how has your life changed as a consequence of job loss at the age of 50-plus?

• What does the American Dream mean to you today?  What did it mean to you when you began working?

We will update our project participants’ pages when we receive their responses and post some of their answers on our social media.  We look forward to reconnecting with our interviewees and  sharing their updates.

Recently, we talked with one of our interviewees who was not able to make her mortgage payments after she lost her job in 2009.  She was fearful that she would lose her home.

Last December, she attended a NACA (Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America) workshop in Charlotte, N.C. and the nonprofit helped her renegotiate the terms of her mortgage with Chase.  This month, she made her first mortgage payment in three years.  She anticipates with great relief that she will be able to remain current on her future payments and remain in her home.

We have added NACA to our resources page and are hoping to interview its founder, Bruce Marks, in the near future.

NACA will hold the American Dream convention from Tuesday, Jan. 10 until Sunday, Jan. 15  at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta.  If you live in the area and need help renegotiating your mortgage, check out the information on NACA’s site and plan to attend the convention.

NACA will be holding similar events around the country over the coming months, so check the schedule on its home page.

Last October, we launched a project on kickstarter.com, seeking to raise $2,500 to fund archival research and purchases for our Over 50 and Out of Work documentary.

We exceeded our goal by $500, and we have added a page to our site to thank our kickstarter supporters.   We are very grateful for their contribution to our work!

Thank you from the Over 50 and Out of Work team!