Coworking couples feel twice the pain in layoffs

updated 5:09 p.m. ET Feb. 8, 2009

PENSACOLA, Florida - It is a well-known risk to lack diversity in an investment portfolio. Now, couples employed by the same company are learning a similar lesson, the hard way.

As layoffs mount across the country and in all sectors, couples who are co-workers are increasingly vulnerable to losing their families' twin sources of income at once. The lack of variety in job skills can also make it difficult to bounce back, especially in a struggling industry.

Such hard times have befallen Clarkston, Michigan, high school sweethearts Victor and Lauri Cox, who married in 1976 and soon took jobs at the General Motors plant; Pam Podger and John Cramer, who met as reporters at The Fresno Bee in California in 1991; and Chad and Lindsey Lewis, who prospered while selling homes for a Tampa builder but now face a more than 60 percent drop in there combined income.

Chad Lewis said the experience "hit us really hard," forcing them to dip into savings in order to afford health insurance and other necessities. But they have found a silver lining: "There is someone there to rely on, to go through this with you."

It may seem harsh for an employer to lay off both spouses simultaneously. But companies risk lawsuits and union contract violations if they consider workers' family status in determining who to eliminate.

And whatever the financial risks, it is simply unrealistic to expect couples who fall in love on the job or while studying the same field in school to be thinking about revenue diversification, said Stephanie Coontz, a family studies professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.

Michael Albans / AP Afere uprooting to move to new jobs in a news state, Podger and Cramer were laid off again.

"I imagine that people will try to be more thoughtful about not putting all their economic eggs in the same basket, but I doubt if they will start trying to meet people outside their field just for economic reasons," Coontz said.

People searching for a lifetime partner say the idea of choosing mates based on their careers would add too much complication to an already difficult process.

"Most of the single people I know are happy just to find another single person they get along with, let alone worry about what kind of job they have," said Margaret Warren, 45, a Pensacola artist and computer consultant who dates a restorer of antique automobiles.

It was a shared love of journalism that helped spark romance between Pam Podger and John Cramer.

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When the Roanoke Times in Virginia began cutting costs and offering early retirements last year, the couple thought they had found safe harbor and a fresh start out West at The Missoulian, a 28,000-daily and 32,000-Sunday circulation newspaper in Missoula, Montana.

Less than 10 months later, the publisher laid them off, unsettling the new life they had begun with their two toddlers.

"Do I wish one of us had a sudden yen to go into medicine, law, business? Sure, some days," Podger said.

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