NEW YORK — Six months after Joshua Persky lost his job as an investment banker, he hung his faith in finding a new one around his neck on a sandwich board.
Carrying a stack of resumes, Persky took to Manhattan streets wearing a white board scrawled with black marker: "EXPERIENCED MIT GRAD FOR HIRE."
The move garnered newspaper and blog headlines: "An ex-banker's unusual job pitch," "MIT graduate will work for food" and "Joshua Persky: desperate and alone."
His search would stretch on for a year, with no paycheck and no prospects.
Somewhere along the way, seeped in a post-layoff muck of sacrifice, humiliation and rejection, Persky found the resolve to keep hoping. That is the lesson he wants to share with the nearly 2 million people who have lost their jobs this year, and the millions more who will next year, when the U.S. unemployment rate is expected to climb to 7.8%, from an estimated 5.7% this year.
Keep hoping. Keep exercising. Keep savoring time with family.
"You can't give up," said Persky, 49. "You have to try to keep your sense of humor, if you have one, and be creative."
But those lessons would come only after time passed.
Persky had been working with Houlihan Lokey for two years when he was laid off last December.
At first, he turned to headhunters and job search engines. Nothing. He contacted associates he knew from other firms. But their businesses were collapsing.
By June, his savings had dwindled. He had applied for unemployment benefits, but those ran out too. Persky and his wife decided to let go of their upscale Upper East Side apartment and put their belongings in storage. All around them, neighbors who had also lost jobs were packing up and leaving New York.
One night, over a dispirited dinner, the Perskys hatched a plan for what to do next. It was their weekly date night, and although the couple had scaled down on spending money on cuisine, they decided to splurge on drinks and a shared entree at their favorite Argentine steakhouse. It would be the last of such dinners for a while.
Following their plan, Persky's wife, Cynthia, moved in with her parents in Omaha, enrolling their two children in school there. Persky moved in with his sister in Westchester, N.Y., while continuing to send out resumes and keeping his Manhattan contacts alive.
