For some, being out of work is like a state of suspended animation—a waiting game the length of which is determined by unemployment benefits, savings and the relative strength of the job market. For others, unemployment becomes a new job in and of itself, where 40-hour weeks are filled with networking and the submitting of resumes.

People like Michael Cohen are reinventing themselves

and their jobs. His new company, Icarus, specializes in

green energy technology.

Photo by Dave Good

And then there are those who face unemployment in a different way: by inventing their own new job.

Gary Moss is a labor market information researcher at the San Diego Workforce Partnership. He says there has been a recent increase in the numbers of displaced workers looking not so much to return to their old jobs but to reinvent themselves or to start their own businesses.

“Individuals who are laid off will look at their skills and reinvent themselves either as consultants, entrepreneurs or as experts in other fields,” says Moss. “It happens from time to time, but particularly when there are economic downturns.”

The latest report from the California Employment Development Department says that San Diego's unemployment rate increased to 11 percent in January. Statewide, unemployment hovers at 13.2 percent; by comparison, the nation's unemployment rate is 10.6 percent. In the West, where unemployment is the highest, entrepreneurship is on the rise. Ruben Garcia is the district director of the San Diego branch of the Small Business Administration. He says the SBA has seen a 30 percent uptick in 504 business loans (loans that are secured by property or home equity) here in the first quarter. And, he says there has been an 87 percent increase in conventional SBA loans made in San Diego in 2010 compared to this time last year. Self-employment is becoming the hot topic.

"We have received more calls than usual in the first quarter of 2010 from people who are interested in starting their own businesses due to downsizing or layoffs at their places of employment," says Garcia.

U.S. Bureau of Labor figures show that at least four million of the nation’s unemployed are in their mid 40s to mid 60s, the so-called baby boomers.

“There are no jobs for 58-year-old men that have been in the business for 30 years,” says Michael Crowell. He worked at The San Diego Union-Tribune as a senior editor for 25 years, the last 15 of which were served as the editor of the “Night and Day” entertainment section.

As the newspaper industry collapsed, Crowell says the U-T went through several rounds of layoffs before he was finally handed a pink slip.

“When they got to me it was, ‘Thanks, but you’re out the door,’” says Crowell. “I didn’t even get a gold watch.”

He says he saw it coming: “When things fall, they start looking at the bigger salaries and the more experienced people, and they get rid of them because they are more expensive.”

With the newspaper and magazine industry as a whole undergoing severe downsizing, Crowell was faced with one single question: “What the hell do I do now? I wanted to stay in music. But in what capacity, I wasn’t sure.”

He says he also wanted to keep writing.

“Knowing full well I wasn’t going to get another newspaper job, I took on a musician as a full-time management client,” he says.

Then, Crowell put his journalistic skills to use, and began to create and manage social networking for musicians. He now hires young stay-at-home moms to help. “They do most of the data input into the social marketing stuff,” he says.

Along with a posse of other music writers who had been laid off, Crowell blogs on a site called Frogger Dogger, and he hosts a radio show KSDS Jazz 88.3.

But Crowell is keenly aware of the bottom line. “If I’m not making in a year what I was making at the U-T, I’ll start looking for a job,” he says.

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OF THE SEVEN million jobs lost in this country the past two years, a disproportionate number of them were in the mortgage industry. Rosemary Pereira’s husband owned a mortgage company in Northern California, and she owned a contract processing company.

Heavenly Cupcakes opened in 2008.

^{Courtesy photo}

“I processed loans for brokers,” says Pereira. “I was in it for 20 years. My processing started to slow down a bit, and then, all of a sudden, it hit. The mortgage industry crashed, and people began to lose their homes. Nobody needed processors any more. I stopped processing because there was nothing to process.”

Jobless, the couple moved to San Diego. They leased a space in the Gaslamp Quarter in 2008 and opened a specialty bakery. Pereira invented a new job for herself as a baker at Heavenly Cupcakes.

“The cupcake industry,” she says, “has been insane in a good way. We’ve gotten national recognition. We’ve been on Good Morning America. I just tried out for a Food Network show. Since day one, it’s been profitable.”

But she still misses her former profession.

“I do think about mortgage banking all the time,” says Pereira. “I was telling my husband that if we were ever to sell the shop, I would love to go back. The money was great. But I don’t know when or how.

Everybody’s talking about how interest rates are so low. Well, you know what? No one can get a loan because they either don’t have a job or they have bad credit or they’ve lost their home. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know how we’re going to come out of it.”

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FOR MICHAEL COHEN, inventing his job began more as elective surgery, then gathered momentum as the economy worsened. After five years with Merrill Lynch, Cohen left to pursue a job in the restaurant business. He stayed in the industry long enough to buy a home. But when the soft economy generated less and less diners, Cohen looked around for something else to do with his life.

At the same time, he was renovating his home, and growing more and more interested in energy efficiency.

“That was about two years ago,” he says. Cohen had learned about a resource called the California Center for Sustainable Energy (CCSE).

“I started taking as many classes as I could there,” he says. “I started networking and learning, and came up with an idea for a business, which was energy audits for residential homes.”

He started a business called Icarus, a certified home energy rating company specializing in green energy technologies. Today, he has three partners and runs the business full-time during the day.

“I’m doing what I can to get things going,” he says. He still pulls a few restaurant shifts to maintain working capital. He works long days.

“But it’s rewarding,” he says. “I’m working for myself, and I see the potential.”

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COLLEGE GRADUATES are also feeling the pinch. Selena Scanlan is 28. She put herself through college using student loans, but by the time she graduated, no one in her chosen profession was hiring.

Selena Scanlan opened Urban by Nature

flower shop in the East Village.

Photo by Dave Good

Her first choice was to get a Masters degree and teach high school English. But after her husband, who was already working as an English teacher, got notice of an impending layoff, Scanlan changed her major to anthropology. She graduated from University of California, San Diego in June of 2008. A year of graduate school followed.

“But I saw my friends who were out and working, struggling,” says Scanlan. “I thought, I have to stop these student loans. I can’t afford them.”

In debt to the tune of $65 thousand, Scanlan needed an income. With her anthropology degree, she approached nonprofits.

“But they were shutting down because there was no money for grants,” she says. “A nonprofit doesn’t sell anything. They help people, and that’s what I wanted to do with my life.”

Scanlan broadened her job search. “I applied for jobs where they needed a secretary, but because I have a bachelor’s degree, they said they weren’t interested,” she says. “I’m like, I will take the secretary’s job. I will take anything. Just give me income.”

Scanlan’s college work made her overqualified for most of the entry-level jobs that were available. “I never saw myself in this position,” she says. “I’m the first in my family to go through school and do it the right way. I did everything I was supposed to do.”

Her solution was to shelve her humanitarian dreams. Instead, she and a partner opened a flower shop called Urban by Nature in the East Village.

So far, she says, so good. “I love my job. Everyone loves getting flowers.”

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“IN THIS ECONOMY,” says Elizabeth Rosales-Hall, “you basically have to reinvent yourself.”

Hall worked in marketing with a major radio corporation. “My husband was laid off from his job and, in order for him to get another job, we had to move to Southern California,” she says.

Her husband was unemployed for a year, but he retrained and eventually found work in San Diego.

“I thought I would have no problem getting a job here,” says Hall. “But they weren’t hiring because of the economy. A lot of them were downsizing. I even walked into several companies that were in the middle of packing up the office because they were closing altogether…"

“I was told over and over again that I could leave my resume if I liked but that they had just laid people off," she says. "It was pretty sad. That was over six months ago, and I have not been contacted once yet for employment.”

Hall started an online organic clothing boutique. She also opened a brick-and-mortar boutique in El Cajon.

“After walking into the offices of all of those potential employers and seeing how discouraged many of those people had become about their work lives, I realized I did not want that to be me,” she says.

But the Workforce Partnership’s Gary Moss cautions that self employment is not easy.

“There’s a lot of competition,” he says. “There are a lot of businesses going in and out of business. And, depending on the type of business, it could be quite costly.”

To help learn more about inventing one’s own job, Moss says that San Diego Workforce Partners offer a publication called, “Plan B for Boomers and Beyond.”

To learn more, visit their website.