Of all the Hoboken archetypes out there – the Wall Street workers, the stroller-pushing mommies, the artists, the recent college grads – perhaps the most overlooked is the unemployed young professional toiling the days away searching online help wanted ads in Starbucks. And yet, in a state with 9 percent unemployment, this group does exist – silently – in our community.
Since last summer, Hoboken resident Andrew Impastato – who happens to be one of those Wall Street workers – has given voice and visibility to Hoboken’s unemployed through the blog JoblessJosh.com.
The unemployment rate for people 25 to 34 was 10.4 percent in December.
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“Sometimes I’d come home from work and I’d see all three of them just sitting around,” said Impastato last week. “It was frustrating for me to work all day and come home and see this. But when I started to hear their stories of what it was like to find a job I started to realize it really is tough to find a job. But there are a lot of avenues you can take, a lot of ways to network. So the purpose of the blog was to share their stories so that other people might relate to something one of the guys was doing to find work.”
Under the collective pseudonym Josh Cooper, the three real-life Joshes – two are age 26 and one is 29 – contributed blog entries about what it was like for them to be unemployed and searching for work in the recession.
‘Don’t hate me because I’m broke’
Other similar blogs popped during the recession, including IvyLeaguedAndUnemployed.com and AwesomeAndUnemployed.wordpress.com, with each taking a slightly different approach to the subject of joblessness.
Unlike some of the other blogs out there, JoblessJosh.com is less about giving advice or data on economic and hiring trends, and more about sharing snippets of life while unemployed. The blog entries are at times funny, witty, sardonic, and poignant.
Since three Joshes who contributed to the blog are all still in their twenties, the blog entries are clearly written from the perspective of young men whose chief concerns in life lean more towards hooking up than paying the mortgage.
One entry titled “Fishing for Females While Unemployed – An Experiment in Futility,” recounts Josh’s attempts to meet young women: “One of the first questions inevitably asked when you’re out there in the wilderness of urban nightlife [especially in New York City] is, ‘What do you do for a living,’ a question that is obviously not my strong suit. If I answer truthfully, I’m usually let go quicker than a waterlogged shoe on the line of a fly fisherman. And with so many other (employed) guys in the city, fisherwomen are all too eager to re-bait their line and cast it back out into the teeming River of Man.”
Other entries deal with the reality of being cash-strapped during a period of unemployment. One entry from Dec. 7, titled “Jobless Josh is No Scrooge, Just Screwed,” read: “[This] year, the problem isn’t the lack of gift giving know-how. It’s the fact that I have a paltry sum of $$ to split between my gifts. I’m just going to let the cat out of the bag now: You’re all going to be getting personalized Jobless Josh artwork and a nice Commerce Bank pen! Don’t hate me because I’m broke. I still love you!”
And naturally many entries on the blog deal with Josh’s brutal job search. One noted, “I don’t know how many times I’ve been told that I’m overqualified. Countless. It seems that all entry-level jobs are looking for someone with less experience, and all positions higher up the ladder (which are commensurate with my level of experience) are being reserved for applicants from within the company or for an individual who is overqualified. I’m caught between a rock and a hard place.”
Having multiple writers contributing to the blog, Impastato said, added more dimensions to the stories shared.
“The all have very different ways of seeing things, a different sense of humor. So I think it was probably easier for readers to relate and connect to at least one of them,” he said.
Generation Recession?
Economic analysts report that the recession was particularly brutal for young workers ages 16 to 24, a group that had an unemployment rate of 15.9 in December, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Older workers, those in Josh’s age bracket of 25 to 34, fared better during the recession and were not hit as hard. Still, the unemployment rate for this group was 10.4 percent in December, slightly higher than the national average.
Citing preliminary census data, the New York Times last year reported that 37 percent of people ages 18 to 29 were unemployed. Ten percent of these same young adults, according to the Times, have moved back home with their parents due to the recession.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that many young adults who are employed, including many college grads, have put their career goals aside and have taken whatever jobs they can get (clerical, service industry, etc.)
Life goes on for the Joshes
The Joshes, and their buddy Andrew Impastato, are a reflection of the times and of their generation.
Against the odds, perhaps, Impastato continues to be employed at his job in the financial industry. One of the Joshes finally found a job out of state and is now employed and living in Florida.
After his unemployment benefits checks ran out, another Josh finally took a sales job just so he could have some steady income coming in.
The last Josh, Impastato said, “still remains jobless and still remains Josh.”
The two Joshes who are now working no longer contribute to the blog since they are no longer “jobless.”
The last Josh sometimes still posts on the blog, but according to Impastato, he has “pulled back a little to focus more of finding a job.”
E-mail E. Assata Wright at awright@hudsonreporter.com.