Life was sweet for Gen Xer Marc Matsumoto when he graduated from University of California, Davis, in 2000 and was inundated with job offers from tech firms. “It was ridiculous. I would get 30 calls a day from recruiters,” he recalls. He chose a six-figure job with a software firm, but ended up unemployed after only six months as the dot-com boom went bust.
Despite the disappointment, he was able to borrow money from his parents to pay the bills and went on to see his career flourish, relocating to New York City from San Francisco for a big job with a Web startup.
“It was great,” he says.
At least it was until economic deja vu hit in December. “I lost my job again,” he says — this time due to the deep recession sweeping across the economy.
Matsumoto, 31, and other members of Generation X — born roughly between 1961 and 1981 — have been hit by an economic double whammy. While much has been made of the plight of older baby boomers, in less than a decade many Gen Xers have taken a hard spill off the Internet wave and now have been knocked down again by an ugly recession, one of the worst on record.
