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Shortcuts: Unemployed and Older, and Facing a Jobless Future

She wonders how to support him in his continued quest to find a job in his field of marketing and financial services while at the same time encouraging him to think about what his life would be like if he never worked in that field or had a full-time job again.

“I wanted to move to what I thought was a healthier place. I wanted to turn the page,” said my friend, who asked to be identified by her middle name, Shelley, since she didn’t want to publicize her family’s situation. “He saw it as vote of no confidence.”

For those over 50 and unemployed, the statistics are grim. While unemployment rates for Americans nearing retirement are lower than for young people who are recently out of school, once out of a job, older workers have a much harder time finding work. Over the last year, according to the Department of Labor, the average duration of unemployment for older people was 53 weeks, compared with 19 weeks for teenagers.

There are numerous reasons — older workers have been hit both by the recession and globalization. They’re more likely to have been laid off from industries that are downsizing, and since their salaries tend to be higher than those of younger workers, they’re attractive targets if layoffs are needed.

Even as they do all the things they’re told to do — network, improve those computer skills, find a new passion and turn it into a job — many struggle with the question of whether their working life as they once knew it is essentially over.

This is something professionals who work with and research the older unemployed say needs to be addressed better than it is now. Helping people figure out how to cope with a future that may not include work, while at the same time encouraging them in their job searches, is a difficult balance, said Nadya Fouad, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Psychologists and others who counsel this cohort need to help them face the grief of losing a job, and also to understand that jobs and job-hunting are far different now from how they used to be.

“The contract used to be, ‘I am a loyal employee and you are a loyal employer. I promise to work for you my entire career and you train, promote, give benefits and a pension when I retire.’ Now you can’t count on any of that,” she said. “The onus is all on the employee to have a portfolio of skills that can be transferable.”

People in their 20s and 30s know that they need to market themselves and always be on the lookout for better opportunities, she said, something that may seem foreign to those in their 50s and 60s.

If a counselor or psychologist “doesn’t understand how the world of work has changed, they’re not helping at all,” she said. “You can’t just talk about how it feels.”

In response to this concern, Professor Fouad and her colleagues have drawn up guidelines for the American Psychological Association to help psychotherapists better assist their clients with workplace issues and unemployment. It is wending its way through the association’s committees.

Of course, not everyone who is unemployed and over 50 is equal. For some, the reality is that they need to find another job – any job – to survive. Others have resources that can allow them to spend more time looking for a job that might have the salary or status of their former position.

In the first case, Professor Fouad said, “You need to decide what is the minimum amount of money you can make and how to go about finding it.” In the second case, she said, it’s necessary to examine what work means to you and how that may have to change.

Is it the high social status? The identity? The relationship with co-workers?

It is important to examine these areas, perhaps with the help of a professional counselor, Professor Fouad said, to discover how to find such meaning or relationships in other areas of life.

Sometimes simply changing the way you look at your situation can help.

Challenges Facing New Chief of Anglo American

Anglo American on Tuesday said Mr. Cutifani, the chief executive of the South African gold producer AngloGold Ashanti, would succeed Cynthia Carroll as chief executive in April. Ms. Carroll announced her resignation from the company in November after more than five years in the job.

The appointment of Mr. Cutifani won the approval of some analysts. They said he had the operational experience to improve earnings by reducing costs and increasing production, and the political connections in South Africa to be able to navigate contentious topics like the reduction of mining jobs.

The questions are whether Anglo American’s powerful board of directors will allow him to push through his strategy and whether he will have enough time to do so before its distressed share price makes it a takeover target, said Paul Gait of Bernstein Research.

Mr. Cutifani has the “operating capability and he speaks very comfortably around technical issues at mining,” Mr. Gait said. But “is he going to have the license to do what he wants to do?”

The list of Anglo American’s challenges has grown in recent years. Minas-Rio, a large iron ore project in Brazil and one of Ms. Carroll’s initiatives, is struggling with rising costs and delays because of licensing problems. In South Africa, the company has been affected by strikes over pay and working conditions. The activities, which had halted production, escalated in August when 34 miners died after the police opened fire at Lonmin’s Marikana mine.

Anglo American also embarked on a review of its platinum business, which accounts for about 40 percent of global production but faces increasing costs, including wages. Shrinking the business might be welcomed by investors and analysts but would undoubtedly stir some political objection. As the largest supplier of platinum, Anglo American is an important employer in South Africa, which has the world’s largest reserves of platinum. The company is to present the results of its review in coming weeks.

Faced with a share price lagging behind that of rivals, some shareholders have demanded Anglo American separate its South African business. Anglo would not be the first company to consider such a move. In November, GoldFields said it would spin off its South African operation, partly because recent strikes had made it more costly.

But analysts at Credit Suisse say the appointment of Mr. Cutifani makes a breakup less likely.

“With his strong operational and South African background, his appointment likely means a commitment to South Africa remains,” a group of Credit Suisse analysts wrote in a note to investors.

In a statement, Mr. Cutifani said Tuesday that he was “delighted to have the opportunity to lead Anglo American at this important stage in its journey, to unlock the company’s very considerable value potential.”

Mr. Cutifani became chief executive at AngloGold in 2007; before that he was chief operating officer of the Canadian nickel company CVRD Inco. He is also president of South Africa’s Chamber of Mines, an industry group.

At AngloGold, Mr. Cutifani is credited with improving the company’s performance despite a raft of problems in the South African gold sector in general and AngloGold in particular.

For years workers have demanded higher-than-inflation pay raises, and the mines must go deeper and deeper to find gold. He successfully fought to keep cost increases within a manageable range. Last year he used the bully pulpit of the Chamber of Mines to help coordinate the sector’s response to South Africa’s labor challenges.

Mr. Cutifani accelerated the company’s development of mines outside South Africa to reduce its exposure to the country. Among investors he is also known for ridding AngloGold of a disastrous book of hedge contracts that it had inherited from a merger. Liquidating the hedge book strained the company’s finances for a period, but later allowed the company to reap higher gains from gold.

AngloGold and Anglo American share a common history. AngloGold was spun off from Anglo American in 2005. Anglo American was once South Africa’s largest conglomerate and the source of the fortunes of the country’s Oppenheimer family.

AngloGold said Tuesday that it had started a formal search to replace Mr. Cutifani. Srinivasan Venkatakrishnan, the firm’s finance chief, and Tony O’Neill, vice president for business and technical development, were named as joint interim chief executives.

William MacNamara contributed reporting.

DealBook: Facing Fresh Legal Woes, Barclays Swings to a Loss

Facundo Arrizabalaga/European Pressphoto AgencyA branch of Barclays in London. On Wednesday, the British bank posted a net loss of £106 million ($170 million) in its latest earnings report.

LONDON – The British bank Barclays faces more legal trouble, disclosing on Wednesday two new investigations by American authorities that clouded already weak third-quarter results.

The bank said the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission were investigating whether Barclays broke anticorruption laws in its capital-raising efforts during the financial crisis. The inquiries follows similar efforts by British regulators.

The United States Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is also investigating the past energy trading activity in the bank’s American operations. American authorities have until Wednesday to charge the bank in the matter. Barclays said it would defend itself against any charges stemming from the inquiry.

The fresh legal woes, coming on the heels of a rate-rigging scandal that erupted this summer, complicate a difficult turnaround effort by the bank.

On Wednesday, Barclays posted a net loss of £106 million ($170 million) in the three months ended Sept. 30, a steep drop from a £1.4 billion net profit it reported in the period a year earlier. The results were hurt by a charge on its own debt and provisions connected to the inappropriate sale of insurance to clients.

Justin Thomas/VisualMedia, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAntony Jenkins, chief of Barclays.

“The last three months have been difficult for Barclays,” Antony P. Jenkins, the bank’s chief executive, said on a conference call with reporters on Wednesday.

Shares in Barclays fell 3.8 percent in morning trading on Wednesday in London.

Mr. Jenkins took over as chief executive from Robert E. Diamond Jr., who resigned in July after Barclays agreed to pay $450 million to settle charges that it attempted to manipulate a key benchmark, the London interbank offered rate, or Libor. In the aftermath, Mr. Jenkins promised to increase the focus on retail banking, shifting away from riskier activity in the firm’s investment banking unit.

The new joint investigation from the Justice Department and S.E.C. relates to the bank’s capital-raising efforts during the recent financial crisis.

Unlike the Royal Bank of Scotland Group and the Lloyds Banking Group, Barclays turned to sovereign wealth funds in Abu Dhabi and Qatar for new capital. Barclays raised a total of $7.1 billion from Qatar in July and October 2008.

The bank disclosed this year that British authorities were investigating the legality of payments to Qatari investors in connection with the bank’s capital-raising. Barclays said on Wednesday that American regulators were also pursuing similar inquiries, adding that the bank was cooperating.

Despite its net loss, Barclays is making progress as its underlying businesses show signs of improvement. Excluding the adjustments, Barclays said pretax profit rose 29 percent, to £1.7 billion, in the third quarter.

In the face of continued market volatility, Barclays said pretax profit in its investment and corporate banking division more than doubled in the quarter, to just over £1 billion, on a strong performance in fixed income and equities. The European debt crisis, however, weighed on the bank’s retail and business banking franchise, where pretax profit fell 31 percent, to £794 million.

Ian Gordon, a banking analyst at Investec Securities in London, said the decline in revenue in the investment banking division raised some questions about the unit’s performance. He added, however, that Barclays was in a position to win market share, as competitors like UBS, which announced plans on Tuesday to eliminate 10,000 jobs, moved to reduce trading activity.

“As others pull back,” Mr. Gordon said, “there’s a potential to win a greater share of the piece.”

Barclays warned, however, that continued difficulties in Europe and uncertainty in global markets could weigh on future profitability. “We continue to be cautious about the environment in which we operate,” the bank said in a statement.

Given the challenging environment, Barclays is moving to insulate its businesses. The bank, which operates throughout the European Union, said it had reduce its presence in heavily indebted countries like Spain and Greece. The bank said it had cut its exposure to the sovereign debt of Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece and Cyprus by 15 percent, to £4.8 billion.

It is also bolstering its capital to protect against potential losses. The bank’s core Tier 1 ratio, a measure of its ability to weather financial shocks, rose to 11.2 percent at the end of September from 10.9 percent at the end of the second quarter.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 31, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated the pretax profit Barclays attributed to its retail and business banking franchise. It was £794 million, not £794.