“The Gen X Career Meltdown:” What Happens When Your Job Becomes Obsolete?

MICHEL MARTIN: Thanks Bianna. Steven Kurutz, thank you so much for joining us.

STEVEN KURUTZ: Thank you for having me.

MARTIN: You recently wrote a piece that I know got a lot of attention, and it sparked a lot of conversation. It was about how Gen X creatives, people who came of age in the analog era, people who were fully, should be, fully launched in their careers, are basically seeing their careers disappear. I’m thinking here about, you know, advertising, you know, media design, photography, things of that, things of that nature. And just the whole world has changed. So what gave you the idea?

KURUTZ: Well, yeah, I’m talking about a certain slice of Gen X. I mean, not doctors and bankers and construction workers. I’m talking specifically about people who went into media and image making in the 1990s. And, you know, these people and myself are, you’re now in their forties and fifties. I’m Gen X as well. And if you’re my age and you’re in one of these fields, you either know people who this has happened to where their job has basically become obsolete or they’re really struggling in their career, or you know, it’s happened to you or you are one of the lucky survivors and you’re afraid it’s going to happen to you. And you’re wondering how long you can hold out in one of these industries. And I felt like there was really kind of like a quiet agony and a quiet grief out there. People don’t necessarily want to talk about their finances or the fact that their career isn’t going well. And so I wanted to pursue that and investigate that in the story.

MARTIN: Was there a, was there kind of a eureka moment or a data point or something that got your attention, that made you understand that this isn’t just, you know, the people you know. what was it made you understand that this isn’t just a small thing?

KURUTZ:  I mean, it was not a piece of data. It was anecdotal, but it was so overwhelming. I mean, I, I, I knew a dozen or more people in this situation, not just magazine journalists were, you know, the world I come from, but photographers and graphic designers and ad people, and, and, and everyone I knew knew people, you know, know in this situation. And you and just talking to people, you could see people were struggling. And these industries, I mean, the other thing is, personal experience. You know, I started in magazines at Time Inc. In 1999. So I have lived this, I’ve seen what’s happened. And so having that personal experience, the, the piece also kind of grew out of that.

MARTIN: Do you have any numbers to sort of give us the scope of it before you get into some of the individual stories?

KURUTZ: Well, I, I, I don’t have numbers, but I will talk about that abundance. what you have to think about is, you know, a lot of magazines are gone. The magazines that are remain, are, are, have skeletal staffs. So all the copy editors and the fact checkers and the layers of editing, and the staff writers at those magazines, you know, those magazines are running lean and mean if they exist now.
And the same thing with streamers. Yes, there’s an abundance of shows, but you know, the, the, a Netflix does not order as many episodes per season as the networks did in the nineties, in the days of ER, and Friends and shows tend to you know, they don’t last as long. So you have the White Lotus, which captures everybody’s attention, but it’s had three seasons over the course of several years. And so all the writing staff, the crews on those shows, you know, advertising has switched over to influencer marketing and, and social media influencers. And so you don’t need the prop stylist and the fashion stylist, and the hair and makeup person and the photographer, you know, and the photographer’s assistant, all those jobs are gone. And, and those were people’s livelihoods.

MARTIN: And then you think about AI, I mean, you have one data point in your piece. You say that by 2030, the US is expected to lose some 32,000 ad agency jobs to AI.

KURUTZ: That’s right. It, it is like seven and a half percent of the current workforce. And already advertising agencies have merged and the industry has contracted, and AI is coming. And, you know, you think about, well, if you’re in your forties and fifties, can you retrain? But let’s, let’s take an example. Let’s say you’re a sound editor for film and tv, and then AI comes and there’s an AI program that does that job. There’s no amount of training that you can get to keep your job. AI is now going to do that job, and AI is going to come for copy editing and fact checking and copywriting at ad agencies. Let’s say you’re a graphic designer and you’ve had a robust career, and you’re very talented and you spent 15, 20 years learning your craft. Well, graphic design can get outsourced to foreign countries where it’s – the, the workers will do it for much less, and the quality’s good. And so you’ve been dealing with that. And now here comes ai and ai will do graphic design. And if I’m the company, if I’m the brand or the business, I’ll just use the AI software and won’t hire the graphic designer. And so then what do you do when you’re 55 years old and you’re a graphic designer?

MARTIN: The chief economist, or the job recruiting website, Glassdoor found that Gen X workers now account for about 25% of all unemployed workers, and they’re taking longer to find new jobs. You were saying that part of the issue for Gen X in particular is what you call cursed timing. Will you talk a little bit about that? What, what’s, what was the curse of their timing?

KURUTZ: Yes. I’m glad I, I’m glad you brought that up. You know, every generation has its burdens. And if you have a 40 year career, there’s going to be technological change in your career. But, you know, let’s look at the baby boomers, for example. They’re now in their sixties and seventies. The more years of their career were spent in the boom times. And that meant they could have higher salaries. And that meant that they maybe, you know, if they were good with their money, they had the possibility to sock away money for retirement and buy a house. And then let’s say you are Gen Z or millennials, you’ve seen this coming, you know, maybe you didn’t get into advertising or you didn’t become a freelance photographer because you saw what was happening by the time you got out of school. And you’re also digitally native. (12:13): And so you understand you know, Instagram and digital technology and TikTok, and maybe you’re not afraid of AI.
But if you’re Gen X and you’re in your forties and fifties, you are in the unhappy middle. You know, you had 10 to 15 years of a career before things started to get shaky. You’re 10 years away from retirement. You know and, and let’s also, you know, you’re, you, you’re dealing with children, maybe trying to pay for college education. You’ve got a mortgage, maybe you’re dealing with elder care. And let’s also not forget that a lot of these jobs, they were fun. They were really interesting and creative. But they weren’t necessarily highly compensated.
You know, I mean, my first job when I got into magazines as an editorial assistant, I think I made $27,000. You know, so there wasn’t an opportunity to put away money. (13:07): You were compensated in other ways by getting to be artistic and creative and going to interesting parties and feeling like you were part of the culture. And so that part has gone away. And also the financial part has gone away. And I think there’s a lot of grief for people and grieving over the careers that they had and trying to figure out, I mean, really why I wanted to write the piece and talk to these people is to figure out what do you do? What do you do when this happens to you? And what are these Gen Xers doing next?

MARTIN: What were some of the, can you just tell me like one or two stories of the people that you interviewed for the piece?

KURUTZ: Yeah, yeah. You know, I talked to a former magazine editor. He had started in magazines in the early two thousands, ended up at, at, at a dream job, really at Spin Magazine as an editor and a writer. And through his time at Spin Magazine, things just kept getting worse and worse. The circulation fell, the ad pages fell. Finally the magazine went to you know, digital and ceased the print publication. So him and his wife, they had two children. They lived in a tiny New York apartment. She also worked in media. And they looked at each other and thought, what are we gonna do?
They ended up moving to California. He took an editorial job at a big tech company, and that job gave him the stability to really think about the next move. And he went back to school and he got his master’s degree in clinical psychology. And, and now he’s a therapist working towards his state license to practice therapy. So he made that career transition. I spoke to a woman who was a prop stylist for many, many years for magazines, and then for, you know, on ad shoots. And she just took a course to be a postpartum doula.
I think some of these soft skill jobs, you know therapy where it is analytical, you know, being, being, you know, running a business, you know, the woman who’s becoming a postpartum doula, you know, the, the, the kind of job, the analytical skills and the interviewing and talking to people and listening that comes out of you know, working in media, I think can translate to a lot of other careers.

MARTIN: I know that you spoke of the sort of sense of grief that people have, but these sound like success stories to me. Therapists, counselors, doulas, all these people, those are contributing to society. So how, should – I mean, is is that really terrible?

KURUTZ: No, that’s not terrible at all. The guy who started the, the bi the store, the, the surf, the surf store, and the surf brand, I think he’s very happy. He made the decision. The guy who worked at a rock magazine and became a therapist, a part of him is still kind of, you know, dealing with you know, this transition. These were jobs that, for better or worse, I think became people’s identity. He was the rock guy at Spin Magazine, you know. Or, you know, the cool, you know, someone else was the cool freelance photographer who got to fly all over the world, and these were dynamic jobs. They were really interesting jobs. And even if you find something else gainfully, you know, it’s, it’s sort of, after doing something for 25 or 30 years, it’s difficult.
I talked to somebody who rose to become an editor in chief of a magazine, and he read the writing on the Wall, and he jumped to, to software several years ago. And he said to me, I still look across the fence at my colleagues in magazines, and I still look at job openings in magazines, because in my heart of hearts, that’s where I would rather be. And, you know, he took the job in software because he needed to pay the bills. the woman who’s took the doula course like this, she’s just now starting, starting this process, and it’s a long process. She took this course, but there’s a certification process and several more courses. And also she’s in, she’s trying to raise a child and live in New York City, and where do you have the resources to just take time off to go back and completely do a different career? 

MARTIN: One of the points that you made is that people who are in their kind of forties, and that’s where the family responsibilities really start to kind of kick in. 

KURUTZ: That’s right. It, it, it is difficult and it’s hard to make that pivot. And it’s hard to go back to school full time if you need to go back to school full time. I mean, I don’t, I, I said this, you know, we, we got over a thousand comments for this story. It, it became the kind of story that I think it allowed people who were thinking these things, or maybe having private conversations to have a more public conversation about this. And I responded in the comments that, I don’t want this piece to be woe is Gen X, you know, I mean, it is like, you know, Gen X is cursed. I mean, Gen X is resilient, and Gen X is independent. I mean, the Gen Xers are the latchkey kids, and, you know, they’re very resilient and they’ve lived through recessions before. And I think Gen Xers will figure it out. These Gen X creatives will figure it out. It’s just that this is that period of time where the road, they’ve come to an, the end of the road in their old careers, I think for a lot of people. And so they are in that process now of thinking, what is next?

MARTIN: Does this say something about the place of work in America? That we are very invested in work, in the work that we do, and some is it that, like the work that we do becomes who we are? And I do wonder if that’s something having to do with these professions that people chose as opposed to things that they just had to do. I’m just wondering if some of that sense of grief comes from the fact that this is a generation that had the choice of what to do.

KURUTZ: Yes. I certainly for the folks that I’m writing about. Yes. You know and yeah, and you, and that, that was a choice to go into these careers, these creative careers. And you’re right. I think, I think they, in some cases, people probably did over identify, you know, that you weren’t going, you weren’t becoming a freelance photographer or, or copy editor or something else you know, or a sound you know, editor or audio engineer to get rich. These were kind of passion jobs in a way. And, and, you know, it was exciting to be able to make a living at them, to go around and say that you worked in a recording studio and, and got to work with bands or, you know, you wrote a, wrote, you know, at a magazine for a living. That was a cool thing. And yes, I think there, the grief comes from maybe over-identifying.
And I also think, and this, you know, I didn’t think about this necessarily when I was reporting, but reading through those thousand or more comments, I think this, the creative Gen Xers that I’m writing about here are really just sort of the tip of this. And with AI coming, you know, in a couple years, I may be able to write the same kind of piece about lawyers or academics or even healthcare. I mean, AI, you know, if, if the technology lives up to the promises – and it’s already starting to replace a lot of jobs –I think a lot of people are gonna think, I went into a seemingly stable job, you know, thinking I would have a career for life in this profession, and I’m five years, 10 years away from retirement, and what am I going to do? And so there’s a lot of economic insecurity out there, and a lot of sense of what is the future of work? What does it mean? You know, is AI coming to help me in my job? Or is AI coming to take away my job? Whether you work on Wall Street or, you know, at a white shoe law firm. And so, you know, I I, I think that this tapped into that, and albeit in talking about a specific group of people.

MARTIN: What you’re saying here makes me think, Hmm, I wonder how this plays, is gonna play out in our politics, because we tend to think of, you know, creatives, it’s a stereotype, okay, but as more on the progressive side, right? I do wonder whether if there’s this massive disruption that leads to all these feelings as well as changed economic circumstances is gonna affect our politics.

KURUTZ: I mean, I’m, I’m from the Rust Belt. I’m from a small industrial town in Pennsylvania. And so I’ve lived through the displacement of blue collar workers and those factory jobs. And we’re seeing the kind of, the turmoil that, that, that, that has caused in the country, socioeconomically, politically in terms of, you know, a person’s identity and worth.  It’s really already come for creative workers. I mean, there has been books 10 years ago, the death of the Creative Class and it’s coming for, for white collar professionals and how that, how they handle that and, and how our society handles that, it remains to be seen. But I think it’s a bit of a free for all. I don’t see guardrails in place to protect those jobs. Just like there really weren’t guardrails put in place to protect the manufacturing jobs. They just went overseas and the communities had to deal with it. And, you know, we’ll see if there are guard rails put in place about AI and the, and the coming displacement in the workforce.

MARTIN: Steven Kurutz, thank you so much for talking with us.

KURUTZ: Thank you for having me.