Feeling the Pinch: Upper Middle Class Limbo

The Aten family enjoys a comfortable life. They live in an 1885 Victorian house that they’ve largely restored on their own. They bought a third car for their two teenagers to share. They own a simple cabin in the Maine woods.

This evening, under the watchful eye of their dog Otis, Carol and Peter Aten are grilling in their backyard.

CAROL: Maybe you should go inside and not see what I do with the burgers.// Otis wants to go in too// Plate and buns

Peter Aten has worked at Fidelity for eight years with a salary upwards of 100 thousand dollars. His job has been to craft ways for large firms to streamline routine administrative tasks.

PETER: Our clients would be Fortune 500 companies that are hiring my company to administer their benefits

Peter is 45. This layoff is hardly the surprise of the century. He knows profit and loss statements and revenue forecasts. As the economy battered Fidelity, he helped identify the parts of the firm that were doomed to lose money. Peter says he completely understands why Fidelity has cut him loose.

PETER: I don't resent them for that. It's a difficult situation for me but I have been in meetings where we talk about the need to do that. And it's difficult to talk about but if you look at the numbers, you can't argue with the fact that, it's not a welfare program.

By Peter’s count, this is the sixth round of layoffs at Fidelity in the past two years. He wonders if it would have been better to have been one of the first victims. At least then, he would have gone out into a job market that is not quite so bleak as the one he faces today.

Compounding the family’s problems is Carol’s status. About a year ago she gave up her job as executive director of a local nonprofit working on a 12 million dollar project. At the time, leaving seemed feasible.

CAROL: Taking the month of September to spend time in Michigan to relocate my mother from a rehab center to assisted living was really important. Had I known coming back in October, that the economy would tank the way it did. I never expected to be … I've never left a job without having the next job in hand . That was a big risk on my part.

Probably not a risk she would have taken. On paper, this once affluent two-income household is about to have no income at all. But they have time before they will feel that blow. Their 19-year-old daughter Kelsey just finished her second year at Boston University, one of the most expensive schools in the country. A legacy from her grandmother provides help with tuition, both for her and her brother Sean who is a year away from college.

Peter estimates his severance pay will carry them through this year. His worries begin with what happens after that and how much is on the line.

PETER: We've spent our marriage, it feels like getting to where we are now. As we're speaking now, I'm sitting in my favorite room in the house. It’s our screen porch. It’s nice outside. I have an emotional attachment to some of the worldly goods that we have. Shallow as that is, it's part of what makes me happy.

Peter says they will do what they need to do, including giving up this house. He’s not focused though on the end game. In addition to the financial cushion of severance, he has the emotional cushion of a full time job search.

As they look at the job market, they don’t question their talents. They know they have the sort of skills the modern economy has demanded. But they do question what slots this current economy will offer them.

CAROL: I don't want to feel wasted, I don’t want to be sitting here not being used. I feel that that’s less about financial more about the brain power.

They both say they are ready to compromise and take work that is less challenging than they would like.

PETER: I did a job at that level at one point in my life, when I was younger and I was able to move up out of that. I don’t know how that works at my age. I’m not the up and comer any more.

Nor does he see himself as a down and outer. He says he might be naïve, but past transitions, even the involuntary ones, have led to something better. Asked how he will feel if a compromise job is the best that emerges, he says he guesses he’ll feel better every time he pays the bills and thinks about the alternative.

For NHPR News, I’m Jon Greenberg.