Unemployed Middle Manager Must Borrow From the Future : Economy: Eighteen months after losing his well-paying job, he’s working for $7.25 an hour and rapidly depleting retirement savings.

AMHERST, N.H. —  To be sure, it is difficult to work up much sympathy for Steve Nolan--a $65,000-a-year middle manager who suddenly found himself unemployed, and working at a $7.25-an-hour temporary job.

Nolan still has his $175,000 home in this affluent community and his two cars. He is better off than thousands of others who are living hand-to-mouth.

But Nolan’s comfortable life is something of an illusion, and one that is consuming the future: He has used up three-fourths of his 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan, part of which had been set aside for the education of the three youngest of his six children, who range in age from 10 to 23.

“It’s a way for us to stay afloat,” said Nolan, who has withdrawn $35,000 of his $45,000 savings. “I have kids in college. We’ve had to use it, plus we’ve maintained our lifestyle. I didn’t know I was going to be out of work this long. I thought I was going to get a job before then.”

But he has sent out 1,200 resumes and made 2,000 telephone calls in the last 18 months, all unsuccessful. His plight underscores the dilemma of highly educated middle managers who are overqualified and underemployed in this long economic drought.

“The middle manager job market is terrible,” said Nolan, 47. “The manufacturing jobs are few and far between. The types of jobs where you can get into a company and be there the rest of your life just don’t exist anymore.”

Nolan was laid off in November, 1991, from CalComp, a manufacturer of scanners, plotters, printers and other equipment for computer graphics. He had worked in the company’s Hudson, N.H., Display Products Group for eight years in a variety of managerial positions.

“Their business just kind of went downhill slowly,” said Nolan. “When I started, there were 1,100 people in the building. And now there’s maybe 350.”

A little over a year ago, the parent company, Lockheed Corp., split off the Display Products Group from CalComp and renamed it the Lockheed Commercial Electronics Co. It no longer produces products under its own name but now manufactures them for other companies.

Company President Roger Damphousse said the market for electronics manufacturing services is growing rapidly.

“I see jobs being created, not lost,” he said. “At this point, our sales are increasing and we’re projecting that we’ll actually be bringing in additional people in the latter part of this year to support the sales increase.”

But this does not mean Nolan will have a job at the company. He and others who were laid off will be given priority only if their skills match the openings, most of which will be in production.

Meanwhile, Nolan, his 46-year-old wife, Irene, and the three children at home live in anxiety and uncertainty.

All of the money Nolan has taken from his 401(k) has gone to pay the mortgage, taxes and utilities on his all-electric home--about $1,750 a month. “My worst fear is that I’m going to end up being dependent upon somebody else,” he said. “I come from a large family, and nobody in my family is well off. If I ever lost this house and we were out in the street, we’d go live with my mother and father or my in-laws. And I don’t really want to do that.”

Nolan deliberately opted for a high mortgage during the go-go days of the 1980s when the economy was booming and he was making big dollars. He refinanced his house and took out a 15-year mortgage five years ago.

The good news for Nolan is that mortgage rates are so low that he is planning to refinance his home again, this time for 30 years, saving him something like $700 a month in payments.

The family has no health insurance, and that is a major worry. “The cost (about $700 a month) is so prohibitive that it would be a choice between eating and having insurance,” Irene Nolan said.

“I haven’t missed a payment on anything,” said Nolan. “We’ve been scratching. My lifestyle isn’t changing except that we don’t spend any money.”

His two older children both went to expensive private colleges; the next youngest is attending a state college. “I think that’s what’s going to happen to my other kids; they’re all going to end up at public colleges,” Nolan said.

Allowances have been cut for the younger children. In the past they had been allowed to take lessons in ballet and guitar. “That kind of stuff has been eliminated,” said his wife.

“We think it’s important for the kids to know they can have the same problem in their lives,” said her husband. “We don’t want to let them think it’s all a bed of roses. We want them to know that we’re struggling, so that’s why we’ve done things like take away their allowances a little bit, so that they’re more cautious about spending money.”

Nolan hadn’t even been able to get temporary work until recently and had been drawing $188 a week in unemployment benefits.

“And that’s because I won’t work for under a certain amount of money. It’s not worth my time to work for $5 an hour. After a while your standards get a little bit lower where you’re willing to go a little bit less.”

He was not too proud to take a temporary job at $7.25 an hour at a small computer firm in Amherst.

“You do what you have to do to survive,” he said. “I got to pay the bills. I know it’s not going to be permanent. I can still look for a job at night by making calls to my friends. Three-hundred dollars a week is better than $188 a week.”

Irene Nolan also works part time for $6.50 an hour as an aide for a mentally handicapped child. All together, the couple brings home about $400 a week.

Nolan has had 16 interviews over the last year and a half, making the final rounds five times. He is sure that eventually, he will get work, although “I won’t get work at $65,000 a year. I may get work at $45,000 a year.”

The tough part, his wife says, is the uncertainty.

“If you just had that crystal ball and you could say, ‘Two years down the road everything is going to turn out OK,’ then you could go back to sleep at 3 in the morning,” she said.