The Brightest and Best (Males) Are the Ones Being Laid Off

by Vicky Ward

Another day, another one bites the dust. Friends everywhere are losing their jobs.

They're bright. The New York Times described the growing ranks of the city's unemployed as the new chic club in town. In part, this is because the people who are losing their jobs are the best and ergo the most expensive talent around. I have been bewildered to see some of the cleverest people I know go down, while five goons get left sitting in their office chairs.

They're also mostly male. A study last week claimed that one result of the massive job cuts was that for the first time ever, women are poised to surpass men on America's payrolls: 82 per cent of the cuts have been men.

For those left in work, the cuts seem illogical. A really busy, productive photographer friend tells me he got an email from a bureaucrat's young female assistant asking him to account for every paper clip, pencil and battery in his desk -- with suggestions of cheaper places to buy them. Why, thought my friend, didn't they just cut the cost of the assistant, if she had time on her hands to add up how many paper clips he was using?

But cost-cutting bureaucrats are not thinking in these panic-stricken times. In one large media company the interns -- rich 21-year-old inheritors with zero experience -- have taken over.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vicky-ward/bad-times-bring-out-the-b_b_165143.html