Time, It Turns Out, Isn't on Their Side.

A YEAR ago, I wrote about a job fair at the Sheraton in Midtown Manhattan, where over 5,000 mainly white collar, middle-aged jobless men and women waited in the cold for more than two hours, hoping to find work. The turnout was a sign of desperate times; until then, the organizer, Tory Johnson, who's been conducting these fairs in 10 cities for a decade, had never had more than 2,000 people at one of these events. For that column, I interviewed two dozen boomers. Given recent reports from the federal government and Manpower, the employment agency, that the hiring outlook is beginning to improve, I thought it would be worthwhile to go back to those highly motivated people. Among them are Jo Fagan, a former vice president at Crown publishing who had applied for over 500 jobs in 22 months, and Greg Kramer, 54, a former buyer for a video company, who had attended three job fairs a month, typically arriving three hours before doors opened. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]