Neoliberal no more? Understandings of job loss among older white-collar workers


Dana Sawchuk, Wilfrid Laurier University

The research presented is part of a larger project that investigates how job loss is interpreted by a group of white-collar workers, specifically those age 50 or older who became unemployed between 2007 and 2014. The study is situated against the backdrop of the 2008 Great Recession in the U.S., its long-term jobless recovery, and larger cultural ideas about individuals taking responsibility for themselves in the face of structural adversity. The data were collected from 62 in-depth, qualitative interviews conducted in 2013 and 2014 with workers residing within the greater metro region of Minneapolis/St. Paul. We used a life course theoretical framework that emphasizes how individuals’ age and life stage intersected with their experiences and understandings of America’s neoliberal culture. As such, we explored the implications of a momentous shift our interviewees experienced: when they entered the labour force in the post-war period, there was an unspoken contract between employer and employee such that loyal white-collar (and White) workers could reasonably expect financial security and career stability, often with a single, life-long employer. By contrast, when they were dismissed or downsized, they found themselves in the era of routine job losses, the “flexible worker,” and counsel for job seekers to operate as a “company of one” (Lane 2011). Within this context, we explored interviewees’ generational identities, reluctance to relocate to seek new employment, and positive reframing of seemingly devastating job losses. We discovered that while they sometimes recognized and resisted neoliberalism as a pervasive force that led to their unemployment, they often narrated their experiences in the neoliberal language of blessings, opportunities, and individual effort. The proposed paper is grounded in these findings but concentrates specifically on the follow-up research we conducted in 2023, which consisted of a survey that was completed by 25 of the original interviewees and interviews with six of these survey respondents. We briefly review their employment status and significant life events in the decade since their last interviews. Next, we turn to the qualitative data to explore the degree these workers (now in their 60s and 70s) continue to interpret their employment transitions and trajectories with a neoliberal lens. Certainly, some of the interviewees continued expressing disdain for or perceived conflict with the younger generation that permeated their earlier interviews, a division that serves to reinforce neoliberalism’s divide-and-conquer ethos. Others, however, expressed satisfaction with intergenerational workplace collaboration and provided advice for younger workers based on a clear-eyed assessment of the shortcomings of neoliberalism and the elites benefiting from them. While some survey respondents and interviewees did eventually relocate for employment opportunities, the vast majority continued to age in place. They thereby resisted one component of the neoliberal flexibility imperative that cultivates untethered workers ready to move anywhere despite significant material and emotional costs. Finally, interviewees continued to espouse a bright-sided optimism about their job losses. While such attitudes appear to encapsulate the positivity rhetoric of the neoliberal era, we argue that the post-material values that some interviewees also express deserve consideration. In tandem with other findings from our follow-up study, we conclude that an alternate reading of our respondents’ positions is possible. Rather than subsuming interviewees’ comments under a neoliberal narrative yet again, we emphasize the hope that springs from their recognition of our common insecurity (Taylor 2023) and their resistance to the economic priorities that undermine our well-being. As such, we assert that the experiences, hard-earned lessons, and wisdom of the elders we interviewed deserve attention in the move to build an alternate future.

Non-presenting author: Annette Nierobisz, Carleton College

This paper will be presented at the following session: