For Philly's male workers, no jobs now ... and maybe never again

FOR 46-YEAR-OLD Frank Wallace, the lowest moments while being unemployed for most of the past three years may not even be when he ran out of jobless benefits this past January, falling behind on his rent and applying for food stamps.

No, the worst thing may be the human cattle shows billed as "job fairs."

"You have these organizations advertising dozens of employers with hundreds of positions," said Wallace, of South Philadelphia, once a purchasing manager for a Center City law firm. "But when you get to the hotel or convention center, the room is only half-filled and there are empty tables."

Nonetheless, Wallace said that he and hundreds of other desperate, job-seeking Philadelphians still will stand on a long line for as long as two hours just to get into a job-fair venue like the Wells Fargo Center. After so long without work, he doesn't know what the alternative is.

Wallace is part of a growing "lost generation" of Philadelphia men in their 30s, 40s and 50s - lacking college degrees and watching the factory jobs of their youth vanish.

Nationally, labor statistics show that one of five American men in their prime years - age 25 to 54 - does not go to work, the highest it's been since record-keeping started after World War II, and also worse than other major Western economies. As recently as the 1960s, only one in 20 men in that group didn't have a job.

And most experts agree that the problem is more pronounced in Philadelphia than elsewhere, thanks to the early death of manufacturing here and the high levels of minorities - who historically have higher jobless rates - and of ex-convicts.

Now, middle-aged men like Wallace - who worked in a long-gone steel foundry after he graduated from Dobbins Tech, and later worked his way up from the mailroom at the law firm - are no longer wondering when they will find work again, but whether they ever will.

The scary part is that some experts say that those fears are not irrational.

"I think that is highly likely" that some blue-collar men in their 40s and 50s, unemployed in the recent recession, will not be able find any kind of work, said Kevin Leicht, University of Iowa sociologist and co-author of Postindustrial Peasants: The Illusion of Middle-Class Prosperity.