Nestled between rising luxury apartments and the country’s largest public housing development lies the future home of Amazon’s new headquarters. For the low-income and homeless residents in Long Island City, the incoming business serves as a reminder of rampant gentrification and social injustice.

Felix Guzman, 37, is homeless and has spent time in and out of shelters, including in Long Island City. He believes that the billion-dollar company’s move is going to destroy what remains of the city’s affordability for thousands of families.

“Queensbridge actually has the biggest project in the United States,” Guzman said of the area just north of Long Island City. “Seeing how rents are being raised all over the place, do we really need a situation where excess is right next to poverty?”

Queensbridge public housing. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

After repeated attempts, Amazon did not respond to comment about what they believe their impact on New York’s homeless community will be. New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio stated the company will prove beneficial to New York City, but has not mentioned it’s direct impact on the homeless community.

Within days of someone leaking Amazon’s news on Nov. 5, housing interest in the area saw a dramatic increase. According to StreetEasy, the number of searches to purchase a home in Long Island City increased by 283 percent. That number only increased again once Amazon officially announced its plans Nov. 13, with a surge of 519 percent.

According to Amazon, the average income for their New York workers will be $150,000 a year. But the median income for Long Island City, Queensbridge and Ravenwood, is only $28,378. This insurgence of high-income residents will be be reflected in rental costs and surrounding businesses, and with 19 percent of Long Island City residents living in poverty, 9 percent facing unemployment and 48 percent feeling heavily burdened by rent, Amazon opponents believe hundreds of people will be displaced.   

Mario McMichael, director of programs and new initiatives at The Partnership for the Homeless, has seen this happen countless times in other areas of New York City and predicts the cost of living in Long Island City will only increase.  

“We know that the property values of the units immediately surrounding this area where Amazon will be will double, triple and quadruple,” McMichael said. “The expectation of the workers being there earning an average salary of $150,000 will want to live somewhere close to where they want to work. That displaces the people that are living there now.”

As Amazon moves in, so does rampant gentrification

McMichael believes tenant laws are not strictly enforced throughout the city. One of the most common problems his organization sees in gentrified areas is landlords forcing lower paying tenants out to attract those who will be willing to pay more.

“What we find is that the people at the low end of the totem pole also get just terrible, despicable landlords that violate all sorts of housing laws,” he said. “These families typically get pushed to the outer fringes, like places that aren’t the most desirable, places where there may be more poverty and higher instances of crime. They get pushed there until, of course, those places gentrify too.”

Homeless New Yorker Nathylin Flowers Adesegan, 72, leads a group of people on Nov. 26 as they march to the Amazon Bookstore on 34th street to protest Amazon opening a new headquarters location in Long Island City. Photo by Li Cohen

Nathylin Flowers Adesegan is just one of the many who have been pushed out. After living in her rent stabilized apartment for decades, the 72-year-old now shares a small, double room with three other women in a homeless shelter.

“I lost my apartment because the rent went from $475 to $1,319.16 a month,” she said. “I was there 34-and-a-half years. So many of us have been evicted and pushed out of our neighborhood and shiny new buildings pop up all around us. We can’t afford to live in them and it’s set to get worse when Amazon comes.”

While Adesegan is grateful to have a roof over her head, she explained that living in a shelter requires individuals to accept degrading treatment.

“What’s it like to live in a shelter? I have a curfew at my age. I can’t cook dinner. I have to go through a TSA search every time I go in and out. I get rationed toilet paper because the plumbing is so bad,” she said.

Research conducted at Baruch College found that it costs New York City approximately $3,522 a month to run adult shelter facilities per single adult and approximately $5,623 a month for shelter facilities that house families, though the specific number of family members was not specified in the research results.  

“What kind of luxury apartments could we have for that money?” Adesegan asked.

For the more than 800 families expected to be displaced by Amazon’s move to Long Island City, finding a solution that benefits their future and well-being will likely be difficult.

According to the Department of Homeless Services, finding a safe and steady place for the more than 60,000 people in the shelter system – and the estimated 20,000 to 30,000 not accounted for in shelters – is difficult. The Department’s Shelter Scorecard Summary for October showed that there are 485 buildings with shelter units in New York City’s boroughs and more than 12 times as many shelter violations, including health, fire, building and code violations.

In New York City even the highest-paid corporate moguls are at risk of falling to the economic bottom and being forced into these conditions. Michael Ball, 38, used to be a producer for Sesame Street, but when he suddenly lost his job, he was immersed into the city’s silenced world of homelessness.

“I’ve been homeless for two-and-a-half years,” he said at a protest against Amazon on Nov. 26. “I don’t really come from anything. I worked my way up from a low production assistant all the way up to the top [at Sesame Street] and it just so happened in my life that I ended up in this situation.”

What angers so many homeless individuals and support organizations is the fact that the city government chose to pay Amazon nearly $3 billion in subsidies to build its headquarters in the city. The company will receive $897 million from the Relocation and Employment Assistance Program, $386 million from the Industrial and Commercial Abatement Program, $505 million in grant funds and $1.2 billion in “Excelsior” credits. Meanwhile, The Department of Homeless Services will only receive $2.06 billion for Fiscal Year 2019 and one of the few homeless shelters in Long Island City that opened this past March was already bought out in a $36.5 million deal in November.

“The immediate need is housing, specifically affordable housing, but the long-term ongoing need is education and workforce development,” McMichael said. “So I definitely think putting money into both of those, that money definitely could have been used that way.”

Guzman agreed.

“If a company is going to come to the city to establish a headquarters why do the taxpayers have to subsidize that?” he said. “After we flipped the senate we find that we do have the money in fact. It’s a little bit disheartening and infuriating to hear repeatedly that we have no money, but they are able to find the money to subsidize a billion dollar corporation and one of the most wealthiest men in the world to bring him here, and buy him a home when we have more than 89,000 New Yorkers without them.”

The truth about Amazon’s employment

While the echoes of New York City’s officials dropping billions of dollars on Amazon’s shiny new floors ring through Long Island City, the only sound thousands of New Yorkers hear is the reminder that Amazon’s promises are not all that they seem.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announce that Amazon will establish a new corporate headquarters in Long Island City, Queens. The announcement was made during a Nov.13th press conference. Photo courtesy of the New York City’s Mayor”s office

The company announced they are bringing 25,000 jobs to their spot in Anable Basin, about half of which will be technology-based and the other half split between miscellaneous positions. Many are convinced that most of those positions will already be filled by Amazon employees who move to the city.

Adesegun says this is just ‘what companies do.’

“They take over public spaces, public lands and they build and the most horrible part about this is that the democratic process was subverted,” she said, noting that the rate of homelessness drastically increased when the company opened its headquarters in Seattle in December 2016.

The positions that are not already occupied, including human resources, administration, custodial and communications, will likely require advanced degrees and experiences that many of the people that are displaced by the new headquarters do not have.

Kate Barnhart, director of the homeless LGBT youth advocacy organization New Alternatives NYC, explained that a company bringing in significant jobs for an underprivileged community is different from bringing in jobs that an underprivileged community is qualified for.

“A lot of their jobs require a certain degree of technical skills and our folks who are homeless or low income don’t have that,” she said. “So they end up bringing in people from outside who have skills they want, but then they are bringing in more people and that’s putting pressure on the already strained infrastructure of an area.”

A look through Amazon’s recently available jobs for New York City show that many positions require nearly a decade of experience in leading corporate projects, at least a bachelor’s degree and endless technical skills. Even smaller jobs, such as the merchant assistant that entails helping with fashion purchases, require at least two years of relevant work experience, a high school diploma or GED and Microsoft Excel experience.

While the jobs within Amazon may be hard for the poor to fill, McMichael noted that a new headquarters will create the opportunity for smaller businesses to rise in the surrounding area.

A struggling community offers solutions

New York’s homeless community and its advocates made it clear that their primary concern is being heard in the loud sounds of Amazon’s soon-to-be construction.

“Maybe they should hire a significant amount of workers that are displaced persons,” Guzman said. “If you’re going to displace or you’re going to change the dynamic for people, perhaps there should be a compromise or an exchange, not just a total transfer of power for the tenants.”

Barnhart suggested a similar tactic, also putting an emphasis on long-term career development for underprivileged individuals.

“One of the things I think Amazon should do is create a program where they make a commitment to hiring a substantial number of homeless and very low-income individuals,” she said. “Not in minimum wage jobs, but train them to have a really meaningful employment with the company.”

Guzman, just does not want the homeless to be left behind.  

“To leave the shelter system is a chess game in itself,” he said. “No one should feel like a pawn to a system that just doesn’t validate humanity.”

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President Donald Trump recently imposed tariffs on imported solar energy panels, causing prices to go up by 30 percent and creating a major roadblock for the solar sector, one of the most rapidly expanding industries in the United States.

“It boggles my mind that this president – any president, really – would voluntarily choose to damage one of the fastest-growing segments of our economy,” said Tony Clifford of Standard Solar to The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).

According to the 2017 Solar Jobs Census by The Solar Foundation, a nonprofit organization, there are more than 250,271 jobs in the solar industry, a growth of nearly 168 percent since 2010.

“It’s an attempt to slow down the solar industry and the progress it’s been making,” said Lennon Palomino of 1st Light Energy, “considering there’s been over a million solar installs in the last five years in the country.”

In many parts of the country, free of tariffs, solar energy is one of the cheapest sources of electricity, it’s clean and it takes pressure off the electric power grid.

“A lot of people like the independence that solar energy provides,” said David Buckner, President of Solar Energy Systems. “[With solar panels] they can be off grid and that’s very empowering to people.”

The imposed tariff, however, might hike the costs of solar, harming demand among buyers.

According to GTM Research, in the next four years, seven gigawatts of solar energy that would’ve been set up aren’t going to be built.

“That’s the equivalent of about a million and a half homes that could be getting solar, but won’t be because of the tariffs,” said Dan Whitten, Vice President of Communications at SEIA.

But this may only be the beginning of it. The tariff won’t only increase the cost of solar, but it will also affect the progress of the sector in terms of technological advances.

“Innovation is key,” said Whitten. “The prospect that storage will be a part of every solar project in the future, this will be delayed because of these tariffs. It’s a deferred benefit that’s going to take longer.”

This kind of technology will be extremely useful in places like Puerto Rico, where Hurricane Maria created one of the largest humanitarian and environmental crisis of the last decades.

“The idea in Puerto Rico is that if you can have backup storage combined with solar, then when the grid is down you can continue to have electric power,” said Buckner. “That’s a huge thing.”

The stated purpose of the tariff is to revive US manufacturing but according to SEIA the imposed tariff will have a very different outcome.

“We think the demand for solar is going to go down, so if that happens then jobs will be lost,” said Whitten. “You’re not going to see a lot of manufacturing jobs added because the process for cells and panels is largely automated. It’s just not clear that the tariff will bring back the manufacturing to the United States.”

This is why some believe Trump’s act is a mere political maneuver.

“I do think that this whole tariff thing was sort of a marketing ploy,” said Buckner. “It strikes me as a way to say you’re standing up for US manufacturing and the general public has no idea if that’s true or not.”

For others, the tariff is an outright deterrent for those choosing to go solar.

“I feel Trump did this not to revive manufacturing plants,” said Beth Haskell, who works for Central Park Conservancy and installed solar panels on her roof in Brooklyn years ago. “I think he did this to discourage people from going solar.”

The tariff, wasn’t a lone, partisan, government push. Two solar companies, Suniva and SolarWorld, appealed to the United States International Trade Commission complaining that the cheaper, imported solar cells were jeopardizing their domestic business.

“Both Suniva and SolarWorld have profit motives,” said Davis Saltonstall of Brooklyn SolarWorks. “Suniva, for example, was going bankrupt and it was the last ditch cry for help so they could open up their plants again instead of rolling up and defaulting.”

But there’s a catch.

Currently more than 95 percent of the United States’ solar panels are imported from Asian countries, like China, South Korea, and Malaysia, and while SolarWorld has German-based ownership, Suniva, is Chinese-owned.

“It’s ironic they’re putting a tariff on foreign panels,” said Saltonstall. “When both of the companies that actually requested this tariff are foreign owned.”

Residential-type installation of solar panels on the roof of Brooklyn Solarworks, Brooklyn, February 2018. Photo by Stella Levantesi

Even with all the downsides to the tariff, some see the glass half-full.

“We found that the solar tariff has acted as a motivator for both residential and commercial customers,” said Joan Herrmann, consultant at Brooklyn Solarworks. “For a lot of people it’s an opportunity, when they hear about the tariff they say ‘that jerk, sign me up right now!’”

Some trust that the tariff might work in making solar energy a catalyst for anti-Trump supporters.

“Tapping into anti-Trump sympathy might help people go solar,” said Haskell. “It’s a chance for us who have solar to say to our neighbors ‘if you really don’t like this guy, here’s a chance to stick it to him’, plus it benefits you and the environment.”

Most of the solar industry is faithful that the tariff will be only a temporary drawback to solar energy.

“It’s an annoyance, but it’s not going to be the death of the solar industry,” said Richard Klein, president and founder of Quixotic Systems. “I guess if they really wanted to sabotage us they could’ve done a better job, so maybe I should be thankful that did not happen.”

Even if, for some, the tariff is going to be more troublesome than for others.

“It’s not like solar is going away because of this tariff,” said Whitten. “It’s a temporary roadblock, but it’s a painful one.”

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Nelson Quinones, 53, who currently resides in a Hunts Point veteran shelter in the Bronx, finds hope in the Save a Suit “One Million Dollar Pledge for Veterans”. Photo by: Talia Avakian

In 1980 veteran, Nelson Quinones, was rushing to get to the car repair company where he worked when he was hit in a head-on collision that left him with a cracked skull and a broken leg. His two-month recovery in the hospital cost him his job and he needed to turn to veteran programs to help him get back to work.

Quinones, 53 a native of Puerto Rico, spent the next 33 years at four different veteran programs hoping to get the skills he needed to get back to working, but nothing worked. He is still jobless.

For homeless veterans like Quinones, receiving the basic training skills needed to get a job has been hard, but a new program, Save a Suit, which offers veterans suits and job training, may provide hope.

“When I look at the programs I’ve been in, I don’t see help and I don’t see change” said Quinones. “Today is the first time I see a program that could give us the training we really need.”

Hosting its “One Million Dollar Pledge for Veterans” job fair yesterday afternoon at Citi Field in Flushing, Queens, the program provided one million dollars in suits, but what the program provided for the 600 attending veterans was more than just clothes.

In addition to employers seeking workers, there were workshops on leadership building, social networking, marketing, and how to land a job, the program’s aim was to “provide veterans with the confidence needed to become proactive in interviewing with employers,” said executive director Jessica Ewud.

“Many of the programs still train veterans to do what they are told in a yes, no, fashion, a real problem when attempting to aid veterans transition from the military world to the civilian,” said Ewud.

This was the case with the programs Quinones participated in. Quinones turned to a veteran facilitation program in Hunt Point, Bronx, where he currently resides, in hopes of gaining the tools needed to get back to working. Instead, the program only kept him further “stuck.”

Quinones wears the wristbands of the veteran facilitation programs he has participated in. Photo by Talia Avakian

The big problem for Quinones was the way the program functions.

“If you say something to the faculty regarding changes you want to see, they try to punish you,” Quinones said. “Half the time, when we try to talk to the staff, they cut us off. I couldn’t finish in a program like this.”

Not only was the environment of concern for Quinones, but also the lack of what was provided.

“As a program, they are supposed to help us get our place, to get an education, but they don’t focus on teaching the most basic skills like using a computer,” he said.

For Ewud, confidence achieved through focusing on basic skills is the key.

“You can tell from the faces of most of the people who walk in that they are upset,” said Ewud. “What we aim to do is to provide them with the training to give them a newfound confidence.”

This was the case for 55-year-old veteran, Mark ManFredi.

Having served in the US army for two years, ManFredi faced difficulty finding a job when he came home.

“When we returned we weren’t looked at favorably,” ManFredi said. “If you wanted a job, all you could find were the low paying ones, but they didn’t have services like this one today.”

ManFredi dedicated 17 years to assisting veterans at the Providence Heath Center in Rhode Island before moving to Hoboken, NJ. For ManFredi, programs like Save a Suit are crucial for future returning veterans.

“I felt my job skills were extremely limited back then,” ManFredi said. “Programs like this give you the confidence to utilize your background as a veteran, and get the job.”

A few feet away, Quinones sat with a newfound hope in the program’s mission.

“When you don’t feel good at these programs you leave, staying in the street most of the time,” said Quinones.

“Today’s program was one of the first times I’ve felt good in a long time,” Quinones continued as he wiped tears from his eyes.

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Zishun Ning, a senior cinema studies major in Tisch School of the Arts at New York University from Guangdong Province in China, came to the U.S. two and a half years ago for the sole purpose of landing a job in the U.S. when he finished college.

But unlike domestic graduates, the 7,000 international students at NYU face much bigger challenges than securing a job here after graduating. They have to deal with restrictive visa requirements and limited jobs opportunities because of their limited visa status.

“I want to find a job here after graduation,” said Ning. “However, it’s not easy because not many companies are willing to offer working visas to international students and there is only a limited amount of visas being offered each year.”

Paula Lee, director of the Wasserman Center for Career Development at New York University, said because hiring international students is costly and time-consuming, it is less likely for companies with limited resources to hire international students.

“You might have to pay a few thousand but if I am a small organization, I might not have the finances to pay to hire international students,” she said.

Visa restrictions

After graduation, international students like Ning, have one year to work in the U.S. under the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, as long as their profession is related to their field of study. But, they must obtain a HIB visa to be able to work in the U.S. for a longer time before the program expires.

The H1B visa is a non-immigrant visa for foreigners to work in the U.S. for three years and can be extended for another three years at the discretion of the employer. If an employer decides to hire an international student, they must apply to the government for the visa on behalf of the student. When the H1B visa expires, a student must apply for another kind of visa or green card to retain legal status in the U.S. H1B visa holders are eligible to apply for green cards and to become citizens while still holding a H1B visa.

Ning said he wanted to start his career as a production assistant in the film industry to gain some working experience. Currently an intern at Deep Dish TV, Ning is worried he might not be able to get a job with an H1B sponsor visa before the program ends.

“The economy is bad,” said Ning.

Bangzheng He, a second year graduate student from Sichuan Province in China and a mathematics major at NYU, said he was not optimistic about the employment future in the U.S. for international students.

“I know some friends of mine, who are working right now under the OPT,” said He. “But the companies are not sponsoring them H1B so they probably have to leave and find another job which could sponsor them.”

Renjie Xie, a second year grad student from Shanghai, China, and a mathematics major, said the only way of securing a job in the states is by working hard and maintaining a positive attitude.

“When you are under OPT, you have to do as much as you can and do everything they want you to do,” said Xie. “My friend told me that it’s still a tough time, you can’t show your emotions, or lose your temper.”

Major Matters.

According to the Open Doors report, which was published by the Institute of International Education in partnership with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the most popular majors for international students are business and management, which accounts for 22 percent of international students area of study, engineering (19 percent), mathematics and computer science (9 percent), physical and life sciences (9 percent), fine & applied arts (5 percent), and health professions (5 percent).

With one third of his classmates from outside the U.S.,He agreed that different course of study played a role in the employment situation.

“From what I heard, your major really matters,” said Bangzheng He. “Employers want to find the right people for the job.”

Ning said even though he wanted to apply for a green card and hoped to live the “American dream” — something that his parents and relatives expected him to do, he has learned that the process of making that dream come true is hard.

“I feel some pressure from my parents and relatives,” said Ning. “They wanted me to stay here for a few years. For them and for me, it was a waste of time if I went back to China with no working experience. In that case, they would say, ‘Why didn’t you just go to college in China?’”

Backup Plan

Compared to Ning’s “American Dream,” Xie said he had a “Chinese Dream,” which was going back to China to build his career back home if staying in the U.S. didn’t work out.

“My parents and relatives asked me to find a job in the U.S. and stay here,” said Xie. “But for me, I don’t think that’s something I have to do because I think as long as there is an opportunity out there, I will go for it no matter where it is.”

Having been in the U.S. for five years, Xie said he has started looking at job postings from websites from big firms like Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch to smaller investment banks.

Lee also encouraged international students not to turn down potential opportunities that might exist in their home country.

“We say to international students that you need to be realistic, because not all international students will find a job in the U.S.,” Lee said. “You need to prepare and figure out what is the deadline, what is your plan B, and what is your strategy if your first choice does not work out.”

“I am not that against going back to China,” said He. “China is doing pretty well and there are also a lot of companies and good opportunities in China. So I can always work back home.”

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President Barack Obama delivered remarks at GM's Orien plant, which re-tooled to produce subcompact automobiles. Photo by Edna Ishayik

Standing in front of shiny new cars on a raised assembly line platform, at a General Motors plant near Detroit, President Barack Obama delivered a message of hope to a suffering city.

“This is a city where a great American industry is coming back to life and the industries of tomorrow are taking root, and a city where people are dreaming up ways to prove all the skeptics wrong and write the next proud chapter in the Motor City’s history,” the President said to the cheering crowd today.

Applying his famous slogan to Detroit’s deep, tangled problems of poverty, illiteracy, crime, and race, Obama said, “Yes, we can.”

“Times are tough and they’ve been tougher in Detroit than just about anyplace else. But we’ve made it through tough times before. We do not quit.”

Detroit has been the scene of extreme joblessness largely due to a cratering of the American auto industry who saw their domestic market share spiral down by 17% between 2001 and 2008 taking Detroit’s jobs with it. The city stands as one of the four worst metropolitan areas with an unemployment rate of about 13%.

The venue of the President’s visit to Detroit highlights a bright spot in this bleak landscape: The five-acre GM plant he toured employs over 1700 workers—jobs that were in jeopardy in 2008. The facility previously built heavier Chevy Malibus and Pontiac G6 models, and was slated for off-lining prior to Obama’s take-over and restructuring of Chrysler and GM early in his presidency.

“We made a deal with the auto companies, “ he said. “We said if you’re willing to retool and restructure, get more efficient, get better, get smarter, then we’re going to invest in your future — because we believe in American ingenuity,” said the President.

The Sonic is just the type of fuel-efficient vehicle the Obama Administration hopes more American car companies will turn to. There is hope that it, and cars like will kick-start the nation’s automotive industry. Priced at about $14,000, sales of the Sonic have been climbing and posing stiff competition to the Hyundai Accent.

These green shoots sprouting in the American auto sector mean renewed hope for Detroit—a reminder of the good times before the city’s population shrank by a fourth, before 40,000 acres of property were abandoned, and before the city’s literacy rate plummeted to 50 percent of the adult population.

But there’s still hope in this battered city. You can see it in the revival of downtown and midtown, you can see it in the urban farming that covers once desolate areas and in innovations like Tech Town. In the next few days Pavement Pieces reporters will explore the challenges and hope Detroit faces in a special multimedia report Rebuilding Detroit.

Serving as cheerleader-in-chief, Obama’s remarks were meant to fuel hope.

“You are all a testimony to the American spirit,” he said. “These cars are a testimony to the American spirit. And if we can take that same spirit and apply it across the board to all the challenges we face, there is nothing that we cannot do.”

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Immigrants are often accused of taking jobs from working-class Americans – yet some say the group brings more business to New York. Pavement’s Amanda Plasencia has the story.

The post Immigrants help economic growth but still face discrimination appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

ReServe is a non-profit that matches adults 55+ with jobs.

When Mindy Lewis, 59, arrived at what would be the first of a long line of unpromising job interviews, she was surprised to find that the person interviewing her for the position was half her age.

“When you’re in your fifties and you go into an interview and the person who is interviewing you is 30, it’s just uncomfortable,” Lewis said. “I felt unnecessary and unhireable and too old.”

With the overall U.S. unemployment rate now at 9.2 percent, both men and women are scrounging for jobs to make ends meet. Yet according to the U.S. Department of Labor, as of November 2010, the male unemployment rate fell from 11.2 percent to 10.6 percent, while the female unemployment rate increased from 8.6 percent to 8.9. The Department of Labor also found that the number of unemployed women from 45 to 64-years-old doubled last year, with the total number reaching more than 900,000.

“Some of the challenges people in the workplace face is ageism, and it’s even harder for women,” said Aurora Salamone, Special Advisor at The New York City Department of Aging.

Many New York City employers have cut costs in recent years to keep their businesses afloat, giving high-ranking positions to younger workers and paying them less rather than hiring older, more experienced women who often want higher salaries.

“In a time of a challenging job market, employers look to get the most qualified person for the least amount of money,” said Tory Johnson, the Chief Executive Officer of Women for Hire, a career recruiting website geared towards college-educated women. “Having a higher salary or higher salary history can hurt your chances of getting hired.”

Lewis, who owns a graphic design business, started losing clientele in 2005. But when she began seeking additional work, she said she was just too old to compete in the shrinking job market.

“I would show my portfolio and people would respond well to it, but I would not hear back from them,” Lewis said. “I just thought, ‘I’m getting older, the workforce is getting younger, and I can’t do this. It’s not working.’”

Scraping by as a part-time writing teacher at the YMCA, Lewis has since given up her search for full-time employment, cut back on personal spending and switched her health coverage to Healthy N.Y., a New York City health plan for individuals making less than $25,000 a year.

“I am living from hand to mouth and I probably will never be able to retire,” she said.

One 64-year-old woman, who did not want to give her name, worked as the senior vice president at a media organization for more than 30 years and was laid off in 2009, along with 10 percent of fellow staff members who also had high-paying positions. Shortly after, she turned to ReServe, a nonprofit organization that provides part-time employment to people over the age of 55.

She has since bounced between several temporary positions. In those rare times she gets called for an interview, she said she often hears the same response from employers.

“I am frequently told that I’m overqualified for the job,” she said. “You pretty much have to dumb down your resume so it doesn’t look like you’ve held a really big job or make it seem that you’re not old. That just doesn’t sit well with me at all.”

Many women have found ways to shift the focus away from their age on job applications. Johnson’s company often instructs older clients to only include the last 10 years of their employment history and to take out their college graduation date if it was any time before the 1970’s.

The company also urges clients to strengthen their social media skills to keep up with younger competitors. Yet for some women, this is easier said than done.

“There are a lot of older people for whom a job search meant calling someone on the phone, meeting them, shaking hands and seeing them Monday morning,” said Johnson, who urges all of her clients to create LinkedIn accounts so they can cultivate a respectable employment presentation on the Internet. “Now, so much of the job process is online. It can be a barrier for an older person.”

Johnson said many women over the age of 50 have scrapped their hopes of landing a top position with a high-paid salary, and most look to get by with part-time gigs.

“The typical theory is that the older worker always wants more money, but in this market, they just want to work,” said Phillip Press, a principal at Temporary Alternatives, a staffing agency based in Manhattan.

Still, some unemployed older women hope recruiters will eventually overlook age.

“I don’t remember a time in my life when the employment picture was as bleak as it is now,” said the ReServe client. “I would hope that employers would take a harder look at seeing the value that an older, experienced worker brings to the table.”

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