professional what?

There's something odd about this economic downturn - but I couldn't quite put my finger on it until I read this Wall Street Journal article.

In it, Burson-Marsteller CEO Mark Penn points out that the 64% of Americans who identify themselves as 'professionals' are hit harder than those employed in, say, the fast-food industry.

Bottom line: the stimulus package will create jobs, but not relevant ones for professionals who perhaps need it the most. Penn said it best:

We are totally unprepared for this new phenomenon. We have safety nets for the chronically unemployed, for the fast-food workers let go (oddly they may be the only ones keeping their jobs in this recession), and for the manufacturing plants that have been shuttered. The stimulus will create construction jobs galore. But we have nothing for the tens of thousands of displaced advertising creatives and newspaper writers and editors that are among the newly unemployed. They can't build roads -- all they learned how to do was to write ads and draft editorials.

To reach their target audience, great creatives use ideas to build a bridge.

If push comes to shove, will they trade thinking caps for hard hats?