By Chip Cutter and Lauren Weber
John Dodge never planned a career in insurance. The financial
meltdown 10 years ago pushed him into it.
Mr. Dodge was a senior at Louisiana State University in 2009,
majoring in marketing and hoping to work in real estate. Instead,
he began selling insurance, on commission, at Aflac Inc. in Baton
Rouge, La. With no base salary or health insurance, he had to
hustle. Within a year, he was promoted to district sales
coordinator and by 2012 his annual earnings topped $250,000, he
said.
Mr. Dodge now runs his own employee-benefits communications and
enrollment firm with a partner. AGM Benefit Solutions LLC has
18-full-time workers, three offices and 250 contractors. He said
gritting it out in that first job proved to be a career
accelerant.
"That opportunity was really, really what you made of it," he
said.
A decade ago, many college graduates struggled to join a
recession-wracked workforce and were quickly dubbed Generation
Jobless. Looking back, some, like Mr. Dodge, now see benefits to
entering the workforce in a down market. They say the weak economy
provided unexpected career twists and forced them to sharpen their
skills. Others, though, say their first decade in the working world
was marked by low wages, disappointment and a feeling of being left
behind.
Cynthia Roberts, now 31, graduated in 2009 with about $65,000 in
student loans and a degree in new-media marketing from the
Rochester Institute of Technology. She hoped for a career in
advertising.
In the past decade, Ms. Roberts has worked at a bowling alley
and music venue in New York, as a gate agent for Delta Air Lines
Inc. in Providence, R.I., and as manager of a high-end salon in
Boston. In her 20s, she lived at times with an aunt and her mother.
In 2015, Ms. Roberts got hired for $14 an hour as a leasing agent
for a Massachusetts property-management company and has worked her
way up to a salaried position as a community director, overseeing
one of its largest apartment complexes.
Ms. Roberts hasn't made payments on her student loans, which now
total $82,000 because of interest costs and additional loans.
"I'm behind," she said. "And I'm still playing catch-up."
Economists have long pointed to the dangers of beginning a
career in a downturn. College grads who entered the job market
during the recession of the early 1980s had, 15 years after
graduation, wages that were 2.5% lower than graduates who didn't
start out in a downturn, according to research by Lisa Kahn, a
University of Rochester.
Workers entering the labor force when unemployment is high often
can't find the jobs they want, "so they make tough choices in order
to make ends meet, often ending up at low-paying or smaller
employers," said Till von Wachter, an economist at the University
of California, Los Angeles. "They recover by moving up to better
employers, but it takes time to find the better firm or better
fit."
Lindsey Snyder, 32, finished her master's degree in elementary
education at Northwestern University in 2009. An internship at
Chicago's Field Museum led to a full-time job at the natural
history museum overseeing Dozin' with the Dinos sleepovers for
families. But the recession had an unexpected silver lining for
her, as she survived cutbacks in the museum's education department:
"The tasks that needed to happen didn't shrink, so I started
wearing more and more hats," she said.
A sympathetic boss found money for a small raise in recognition
of her extra responsibilities, but her hourly rate still didn't top
$20. She was promoted in 2012 with a larger raise as administrator
of the museum's unusual learning collection, where members can
borrow items like a stuffed snowy owl or a cast of a dinosaur
skull.
Now living in Ferndale, Wash., with her husband and three
children, Ms. Snyder is pursuing a doctorate in pedagogy at the
University of British Columbia in nearby Vancouver. Looking back,
she said being a new graduate during the recession worked to her
advantage because it gave her a chance to shine even though the
financial rewards were scant.
"A lot of times the newbie gets to stay because the newbie isn't
getting paid as much," she said.
Even 2009 grads who consider it a net positive to have started
their careers in one of the worst job markets in memory often
wonder how their lives might have been different under more
favorable circumstances.
Had a company offered Mr. Dodge in New Orleans a full-time job
paying $60,000 when he graduated, he would have been tempted to
take it.
"If the market was good, and there were offers on the table, it
would create some questions of taking an easier road," he said.
Ms. Roberts, the property manager, said there is a certain irony
to her position now. She is interviewing new graduates for
entry-level leasing positions, and many won't return her calls or
can't remember which company she is with because they are getting
so many calls from potential employers. Some, hours after
submitting an application online, say they already have another job
lined up, she said.
If there is an upside, it's that Ms. Roberts can relate to
tenants going through their own financial hardships.
"If I had never experienced not being able to pay my own rent, I
don't think I would be as caring or understanding," she said. "I
feel like I grew up very quickly."
Write to Chip Cutter at chip.cutter@wsj.com and Lauren Weber at
lauren.weber@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 25, 2019 05:44 ET (09:44 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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