Gen Xers get hit with a double whammy

Eve Tahmincioglu • Profile • E-mail

Life was sweet for Gen Xer Marc Matsumoto when he graduated from University of California, Davis, in 2000 and was inundated with job offers from tech firms.

“It was ridiculous. I would get 30 calls a day from recruiters,” he recalls.

He chose a six-figure job with a software firm, but ended up unemployed after only six months as the dot-com boom went bust.

Despite the disappointment, he was able to borrow money from his parents to pay the bills and went on to see his career flourish, relocating to New York City from San Francisco for a big job with a Web startup.

“It was great,” he says.

At least it was until economic deja vu hit in December. “I lost my job again,” he says -- this time due to the deep recession sweeping across the economy.

Matsumoto, 31, and other members of Generation X — born roughly between 1961 and 1981 — have been hit by an economic double whammy. While much has been made of the plight of older baby boomers, in less than a decade many Gen Xers have taken a hard spill off the Internet wave and now have been knocked down again by an ugly recession, one of the worst on record.

“It was a rude awakening,” says Brendan Courtney, senior vice president of The Mergis Group, a division of recruiting and staffing firm Spherion Corp.

“They found themselves from one day feeling they were immortal and entitled to all these dollars in (the) late 1990s to 2001. Then went from that to the unemployment line.” And less than 10 years later, he adds, they’re here yet again.

It definitely was a rude awakening for Matsumoto.

In 2000, he felt on top of the world when he took a job as an information architect for a software company called Bridgestream in San Francisco. He was offered $130,000 a year and a $10,000 signing bonus, he says. “I bought a BMW, had a huge apartment and was going out for dinner every night in San Francisco, and I didn’t save a penny,” he says.

His world came crashing down when the firm he worked for was unable to secure funding, and he was suddenly out of work.

“I didn’t have enough money to pay my next month’s rent,” he says. “I had to ask my parents, who are very frugal people, for money. That was really bad.”

Special Report: Reinventing America As the economy gets uglier, Americans are adapting to the crisis. Here are their stories. About the series PART 1 Recession leaving some couples without work Vote: Which generation is suffering most? New beginnings: Your reinvention stories PART 2 Gen Xers get hit with a double whammy Reinventing your career |  8 reinvention tips PART 3 Boomers face stark choices in bleak economy Moving on: Diary of a busted Boomer PART4 Recession transforming the U.S. jobs picture Michigan looks to jump-start stalled careers For some, franchising a viable career path Downturn puts trucking firms in driver's seat Have a story idea? Send an e-mail to .

Despite getting caught up in the dot-com bust, Matsumoto was able to dust himself off and go on to hold a series of good jobs in the tech industry, including a stint at Netflix, the video rental company. He then relocated to New York City for a job as chief marketing manager for a startup called Thrive.com in 2007.

Unfortunately, the company ran out of money, couldn’t get funding, and he got laid off late last year.

For the youngest members of Generation X, those aged 25-34, the jobless rate has jumped to 8.7 percent from 4.9 percent a year ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That puts them right in the middle, as younger workers have an even higher jobless rate, while older workers stand a slightly better chance of having a job.

You don’t have to tell Michael Durwin, 39, about the crummy job market, which he also experienced firsthand earlier this decade.

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