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"Blue Collar" - Hit Hard By Age Bias, Jobless But Still Don't Consider that Reset

 " Experienced workers have been slower to recognize job-market shifts that create new roles in construction and similar industries." - The Wall Street Journal, January 14, 2025 As a career coach specializing in the over-50 segment I have a front-row seat on some of the mindsets in the labor market. Among the aging - the majority of whom Pro Publica predicts will be out of their knowledge work jobs - there remains a bias against doing anything that doesn't involve the trappings of the office. That's their comfort zone: the desk, the organizational hierarchy, the processes, the policies. And the polite well-measured conversations. That means they probably wouldn't even consider a shift to those jobs in blue-collar industries where they essentially would be doing knowledge tasks. WSJ presents the service advisor positions at car-repair chain Crash Champions. That's white-collar work in a blue-collar setting.   With good reason, they would wonder: Could I fit in...
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"The Company Man" - 2011 Film Captures Current Pain of Losing Your Job

Early one morning you're crowing about your golf game. As the day moves on your life changes in minutes: You're told by HR that your job no longer exists. Terms of severance are announced. And you stumble home to your family, then outplacement, then the abyss of months and months of no luck landing a comparable job. If you're over-50, Pro Publica documents that's inevitable for the majority of you. That series of events is showcased in the 2011 film "The Company Man."  Two older executives and one younger one are forced out.  You can catch the movie on the free streaming platform Tubi.  Back then this loss of the American Dream was called "downsizing." Currently it goes by labels such as: Cost efficiency Shareholder Value Automating tasks through AI. But the dislocation is the same. As an intuitive coach I bear witness to the usually irreversible blip in a well-planned career path. Even if another good job turns up - and that happens now and then - ...
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Verizon Outage: Mr. Schulman, This Was Not Just a "Huge Inconvenience"

The new CEO at Verizon Daniel Schulman is starting out 2026 on a sour note. At least for businesses which depend on its telecommunications. Today there was an outage in several large metro areas such as New York, Seattle and Los Angeles. The impact of that extends to how the corporation handled the crisis.  The Wall Street Journal reports that its spokesperson officially said: “We know this is a huge inconvenience, and our top priority is to get you back online and connected as fast as possible. We appreciate your patience while we work to resolve this issue.” How a major provider of telecommunications dare tell subscribers they are only experiencing a "huge inconvenience." The economy runs on telecommunications. The reality for businesses is that this shut down some of their core channels of communications, including voice and texting. Although my service was not in the disrupted regions, as soon as I heard about the outage I notified a business whose clients I service that...
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BoomerVille, January 14, 2026 - It Wasn't That Bad

  Dow Jones Industrial Average INDEXDJX: .DJI 49,149.63 −42.36  (0.086%) today
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The Big Score: What Keeps the Unemployed Jobless and Underachievers Underachieving

We coaches learn the most from our clients. Everything from just-in-time practices in recruitment to what kinds of workers are getting promoted.  What I have been observing in this challenging and ever-changing labor market is this: Too many of those coming to me for a complimentary consultation have an unrealistic mindset about how to get, hold and more on to better work. They share a fantasy of The Big Score.  For example, they want a better paying job than what they had had before being laid off. If they're making a career shift they want to surge to the top quickly. There's no factoring in how to get there in 2026.  So they turn down work not aligned with that fantasy. They remain jobless. And in increasing isolation. Those once on their network start to duck them. Financial reserves are running low. Meanwhile they blow off the recommendation to grab a survival job to restore their confidence (which they might not realize they've lost) and reset their persona as work-...
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BoomerVille: Should We Be Getting Nervous?

  Dow Jones Industrial Average INDEXDJX: .DJI 49,344.29 −245.91  (0.50%) today Jan 13, 9:46 AM EST  •  Disclaimer
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AI as Big Bad Wolf - Can OpenAI's Super Bowl Commercial Declaw the Perceived Threat?

In  The Wall Street Journal's coverage of the coming Open AI's Super Bowl commercial two sentences stand out: "Half of U.S. adults are more concerned than excited about artificial intelligence, according to a spring  survey by Pew Research . Only 10% say excitement outweighs their worry." Unlike all those on LinkedIn who post about how "thrilled" they are about this and that, only a handful of U.S. adults are jumping with enthusiasm about AI. And it seems absolute hubris for OpenAI to assume a commercial can transform that. Already sectors have been wiped out by the embrace of AI tools. They range from content-creation to customer service. Good luck getting a job or a contract assignment in marketing. Both  Paul, Weiss  and  Sullivan and Cromwell  sketched out some of how the Law of Supply and Demand will shift against human manpower in the legal sector.  In addition, but not felt to be so urgent in the present, is the threat that AI can turn on h...
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