American Idle: Late-Career Job Loss in a Neoliberal Era

by Annette Nierobisz, Dana Sawchuk, Dana Sawchuck, Annette Marie Nierobisz

Overview

In American Idle, sociologists Annette Nierobisz and Dana Sawchuk report their findings from interviews with sixty-two mostly white-collar workers who experienced late-career job loss in the wake of the Great Recession. Without the benefits of planned retirement or time horizons favorable to recouping their losses, these employees experience an array of outcomes, from hard falls to soft landings. Notably, the authors find that when reflecting on the effects of job loss, fruitless job searches, and the overall experience of unemployment, participants regularly called on the frameworks instilled by neoliberalism. Invoking neoliberal rhetoric, these older Americans deferred to businesses’ need to prioritize bottom lines, accepted the shift toward precarious employment, or highlighted the importance of taking initiative and maintaining a positive mindset in the face of structural obstacles. Even so, participants also recognized the incompatibility between neoliberalism’s “one-size-fits-all” solutions and their own situations; this disconnect led them to consider their experiences through competing frameworks and to voice resistance to aspects of neoliberal capitalism. Employing a life course sociology perspective to explore older workers’ precarity in an age of rising economic insecurity, Nierobisz and Sawchuk shed light on a new wrinkle in American aging.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781978835887
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	05/13/2025
Series:	Inequality at Work: Perspectives on Race, Gender, Class, and Labor
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	206
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

ANNETTE NIEROBISZ is a professor of sociology and the Ada M. Harrison Distinguished Teaching Professor of the Social Sciences at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. This is her first book.

DANA SAWCHUK is a professor of sociology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada. She is the author of The Costa Rican Catholic Church, Social Justice, and the Rights of Workers, 1979–1996.


 

Table of Contents

1    “Broke, Unemployed, Downsized Again”
2    Hard Falls and Soft Landings
3    Generations at Work
4    In God We Trust
5    “Here’s Where I Am, Here’s Where I’ll Stay”
6    Silver Linings and Positive Thinking
7    Where Are They Now? And What Can We Do?
Appendix A    Studying Late Career Job Loss in the “Land of 10,000 Lakes”
Appendix B    Tables 1 and 2
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

1 “Broke, Unemployed, Downsized Again” 1
2 Hard Falls and Soft Landings 13
3 Generations at Work 28
4 In God We Trust 46
5 “Here’s
Where I Am, Here’s
Where I’ll Stay” 64
6 Silver Linings and Positive Thinking 82
7 Where Are They Now? And What Can We Do? 98
Appendix A: Studying Late-Career
Job Loss
in the Land of 10,000 Lakes 117
Appendix B: Tables
127
Acknowledgments
133
Notes 137
Bibliography 165
Index 000

Editorial Reviews

"American Idle focuses on an underexamined, yet critical, group of the unemployed: those later in life. It’s engagingly written and provides important insights into later-life unemployment. The authors’ findings are all elegant and conceptually rich contributions to our understanding of the unemployment process for older Americans."

author of The Tolls of Uncertainty: How Privilege and the Guilt Gap Shape Unemployment in America - Sarah Damaske

"American Idle's use of a life course approach to examine older adults' unemployment experiences is unique and fills a gap in the unemployment literature. The topic is timely, given the graying of the U.S. population, and the writing is engaging."
 

author of Job Loss, Identity, and Mental Health (Rutgers University Press) - Dawn Norris