Mel Holden is the most out-of-work man in America. He spent 15 years at Westinghouse Electronics but lost his job four years ago in the first wave of the big defense cutbacks. Since then, he wakes up every morning and braces himself for rejection. It has now happened to him 1,973 times by actual count.
"Well," he was saying yesterday morning, minutes before racing off to a job fair, "it's actually slightly higher now. Closer to 2,000 rejections."
He has them all in black and white. There they are, computerized lists of job applications, dates and companies and personnel officers' names and phone numbers and interview results, page after page, private companies and government agencies, laboratories and research outfits and hospitals and hotels and universities, work he's been trained to do, work he's willing to accept, one rejection inevitably following another.
"I spend eight to 12 hours a day searching for work," he was saying yesterday. "Not necessarily in line with my career, either, but some kind of work to support my family. My skill is electronics, but I've looked for work in food processing, in car sales. They tell me, no, your background's in electronics. I've traveled around the state. I've filled out applications, searched newspaper ads, done mass mailings, done cold calls.
"I've gone to 75 different job fairs. About 60 percent of the companies haven't responded, and 39 percent replied and have no openings but will keep me in their files. I've broken it all down statistically. I've managed to get 23 interviews. I've had two offers."
At Westinghouse's Hunt Valley operations, he'd been a reliability engineer, analyzing problems with various product parts. It paid off with a contract job at Johns Hopkins University. This lasted 16 months. Then Hopkins had to lay off people because of bTC declining long-term scientific projects.
He latched onto a temporary job with the U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command in Aberdeen. It was a three-month stint, specified in advance. Since then, nothing. Only 1,973 rejections neatly listed in a computer, then printed carefully page after page.
"I've used 22 different styles of cover letters," Holden says, "and 23 different styles of resumes. I keep upgrading my computer formats just to keep pace with the latest fads. I've used different colored paper. I've talked to recruiters. They have an attention span of seven seconds."
Holden is 52. He is gray-haired and wears glasses. He is married and has two sons, and everybody wonders if full-time work is a thing of the past. He's gone through unemployment pay. He's exhausted all but a few hundred dollars of his savings account. He is about to begin dipping into accounts once set aside for his retirement.
"Also," he says, "I've sold off a lot of my childhood possessions to make ends meet. If I cash in my IRA account, it might last me 10 or 12 months. And I ask myself, have I been working 34 years for this?"
He has a hearing disability, which all prospective employers insist isn't linked to his employment problems, though they may be lying. There are laws in this country against discrimination based on disabilities or age. His hearing problem has gotten worse over the years. There's nerve damage, based either in a birth defect or a childhood case of spinal meningitis. He has a hearing aid and a sound amplifier in his telephone. In person, he tends to read lips.
He goes to job fairs and feels like he doesn't belong.
"How many people out there are 30 and have that stock broker look?" he asks. "They're young and good looking. I went to one job fair last February and waited in line at a booth. In front of me were four young ladies in their 20s. My 'interview' lasted less than 45 seconds.
"At another booth, they asked me why I was in line. They wanted a 'recent' college graduate. I told them I was. I picked up a math degree last year. She looked at my gray hair and thanked me for coming."
He says all of this in tones that don't reveal bitterness or desperation, though he must feel both. He talks of people in situations worse than his, people with graduate degrees who can't find work, people with profound physical difficulties.
"It's sad and pathetic to see such people out of work," he says.
But his own problems are bad enough, and he can examine them right there, page after page after page. He's the most unemployed man in America. It says so almost two thousand times.