The White Collar Recession

Part One- Awareness: Coyote ContinuityWhen an economy turns, the first response isn’t denial, but coyotecontinuity. Nothing seems to have changed. If you’re still attractingcustomers, delighting them, and making payroll, nothing in yourexperience confirms that you are, like Chuck Jones’ Looney Toonscharacter Wile E. Coyote, already running on thin air, familiar mesafalling ever further behind you.No one notices big shifts. We might notice others failing, but we imaginethese caused by some character flaw—poor planner, weak manager,greedy speculator. Never simply bad luck or tectonic movement. Evenafter the Madoff scandal makes headline news, we imagine some closecorrelation between wealth and intelligence, and the loss of wealth orincome as evidence of some shameful personal shortcoming. We’re morelikely to whisper about another’s stumble than notice our own.Fact is, our economy grew to specialize in making the best danged buggy whips in theuniverse, and nobody’s buying buggy whips now.We’ve done this before.A few years ago, I interviewed the Chief Financial Officer of one of the two remaining ex-buggy whip manufacturers in what was a hundred years ago the center of a burgeoningbuggy whip industry, Westfield, Mass. His industry-leading company was called U. S. Whipuntil well into the 1920s when, faced with certain extinction in spite of being masters of their universe, they stumbled aside to reconsider what they really knew how to do, howthey might produce real value in the world.After two decades of coyote continuity, losing altitude, U. S. Whip became U. S. Line, soonto become the leading braider of fishing line in the world. They decided that their uniquevalue proposition might be in braiding, and they chose to stop braiding buggy whips, anecessary identity-crushing shift that only took twenty years and most of their corporatetreasury to acknowledge. Denial came in attempts to legislate laws requiring buggy whipholders on all horseless carriages, but their industry evaporated anyway, displacing everymaster craftsman and reliable supplier up and down their supply chain.Each of these, in turn, experienced over-running their personal mesa and learning how toaccept their world on previously unimagined terms at the least convenient time.This shift is destructive, but also holds the potential for creativity and renewal. There are noguarantees except that things will be disorientingly different. So different that the firstglance will notice no difference at all. What will I do in response? I will make my buggywhips faster, better, and cheaper until my inventory smothers me. Then I might notice theabsence of solid ground beneath me, then gravity will have her way. I will be inventing aparachute on the way down. You’d do this too. It’s only human.Those who imagine themselves still standing on solid ground might well imagine correctly.At ten percent unemployment, ninety percent are still employed. The government has longbeen by far the largest contributor to Walla Walla’s economy, though the security of eventhose jobs is threatened by the hard choices being made by people far away from here.What makes this one different? The disappearing white collar jobs, previously held by well-educated, highly-skilled, well-paid professionals. They do not qualify for the blue collar

safety-net. Their average gross earnings over the past year exceed the maximum allowableto qualify for food stamps. They were sole proprietors, and don’t qualify for unemploymentcompensation. Some were entrepreneurs who invested a lot more than forty hours per weekin their careers and sometimes earned a lot less than minimum wages in return. Where willthey go now? What will they do?They might be re-trainable down the food chain, to drive truck or work transientconstruction rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. But not in that tie. And not in thoseshoes. Our first generation to graduate from college sent back to trade school. Some arguethat this is a waste.The economists call this Creative Destruction, and claim it’s a normal part of every healthyeconomy. We invent britches, learn to efficiently manufacture and distribute them,outsource their manufacture and distribution, then outgrow them, leaving everyone kickingair on the far side of some personal mesa.However numbing the numbers might feel, the personal experience is painful. I amsuddenly a member of the white collar unemployed. I’m over-qualified but lacking in specificexperience, expecting too much while willing to settle for almost anything. Worse, I’m indanger of losing more than my identity in this, and I feel my identity melting. I don’t knowwho I am anymore, where I might reasonably aspire to grow, what I might do withoutmerely fooling myself into believing there might be a secure future there.Out of options, out of ground, but at least, at last, coyote-aware of the gravity of mysituation. Of our situation.This one’s different. Recently, the UB’s Web Producer Jeremy Gonzalez captured commentsfrom citizens on Main Street. “It won’t be so bad here.” “They should have marketed moreagressively.” “We’re the center of our universe.” Wile E. couldn’t have said any of it better.Attend the Port’s Economic Development Committee Meetings (hey, it’s a free lunch!), andhear the grim statistics reinterpreted into more reassuring form. I announced that I wasthere representing the White Collar Recession. No one else was. Yet.