Middle-aged, Laid Off, and Losing Hope

Dan Akst chats up Michael Winerip’s terrific piece on a 58-year-old formerly highly compensated executive named Michael Blattman who can’t find a job. Dan (who has written for us here and here) believes this episode says a lot about our current economic predicament. And I think he’s right. When considering Blattman’s plight, it’s hard not to wonder what would help him.

Longtime readers of this blog know that I’m obsessed with entrepreneurship (there’s a chapter on it in my forthcoming book) and the hope for the Blattmans of the world—or, for example, the KC Star writer Mike Hendricks who was found job hunting here—is an economy where entrepreneurs can sweep up obviously talented folks such as Hendricks or Blattman and redeploy them in new ways. One of the frustrations of the current economic discussion is how little attention is paid by the White House and Capitol Hill to sustained growth driven by entrepreneurship. Without it, Blattman, Hendricks, and others will be job hunting for a long time.