interstitial_logo_252x37As hard as he tried, Michael Duffy couldn’t find a job to match the one he’d lost.

For two decades he earned six figures selling equipment to factories. But at 62, he kept getting turned away, one job interview after another.

So last fall he started at Starbucks.

He wears a green apron, wipes tables, mans a cash register that he’s gradually learning and banters with people who order an espresso breve or a Caramel Brulée Latte. He has natural rapport with customers, especially older ones, enjoys winning people over and likes taking care of them.

But he makes less in a day than he did in a half-hour at the peak of his sales career.

“The pay isn’t what we would all hope,” Duffy, of Eden Prairie, said the day he started. “But it’s something to do and it’s great benefits and we’ll see where it goes.”

It has never been easy to get older, need a good full-time job and not have one. But that’s the predicament now for more Americans than ever, and the challenge has gotten steeper in the prolonged recovery. Millions of workers in their 50s and 60s are drifting into the perilous intersection of unemployment, underemployment and retirement.

“The situation is worse today than it has been in past recoveries,” said Sara Rix, a senior strategist at the AARP Public Policy Institute. “These men and women have little time to recover, and working later in life may be the only way some can make it.”

Continue the full article here

By Adam Belz

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