Alex Whillock of Dayton, Ohio, had worked for the same auto customizing shop for nearly 20 years when his employers cut him from the payroll.
"It was September of 2005," Whillock said. "I went to get my paycheck, and they said they were letting me go. No warning or anything."
Whillock, 47, is not alone. Over the last few years, local companies large and small have been slashing their payrolls or shutting down completely, leaving long-time employees -- many of them well into middle age -- floundering in a dwindling job market.
A little over a year later, Whillock said he's self-employed and his income is about half what it used to be.
"I didn't want to be a middle-aged man looking for a job, but that's the way it turned out," Whillock said.
Delores Woodall, a team leader for the Workforce Investment Act program at Montgomery County's Job Center, has counseled people looking for work for most of her adult life. She said many of the people she's worked with over the last couple years have been in the same job 10 to 20 years or more and have no experience being unemployed.
"They come in, and they want to get another job as quickly as possible," Woodall said. "They think it's going to be easy. They're motivated, but they've got a lot to learn."
Whillock said losing his job was a huge blow to his self-esteem, and it didn't help that he couldn't find another company looking for someone whose specialty was working on vinyl tops and automobile upholstery.
His unemployment payments covered his mortgage, and the salary his wife, Marsha, earned at Bethany Lutheran Village paid for everything else. "I basically became a house husband for a while," he said.
In addition to preparing meals and looking for a job, Whillock said he took on jobs around the house like organizing the family garage. "If I just sat here watching television and thinking about being out of a job, I'd just go totally crazy."
Since he couldn't find a job comparable to the one he'd had, Whillock started his own company, C&R Custom Upholstery, and started looking for customers. He stayed in touch with some of his former coworkers at the custom shop, and they directed business his way when they could.
"At about the time my unemployment ran out, I got to the point I had enough business to keep going," Whillock said. "It's hard, though, doing all the paperwork and customer relations myself."
Being unemployed at middle age caught Glenn DeBerry of Riverside, Ohio, by surprise, too. He retired from the Air Force in 1996 after 24 years active duty and went to work for the Ohio Department of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities. DeBerry, 54, was a secretary for the superintendent of the department's Montgomery Development Center in Huber Heights.
State budget cuts forced the closing of Springview Development Center in Springfield, and a senior employee from Springview bumped DeBerry out of his job in July 2005.
"I was sitting there fat, dumb and happy thinking I had a job for life," DeBerry said "All of a sudden, I was an old geezer who had to go out there and compete with kids just out of college."
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