When Patrick Ciriello lost his job and couldn’t find work for nearly a year, his family’s foundation crumbled.

“You hear about people who hit rock bottom,” Ciriello told the Guardian. “Well, I was there.”

For most of his career, the 60-year-old with a master’s degree in information management designed software systems for banks, universities and pharmaceutical companies. But a series of economic shocks – the dotcom crash, the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid pandemic – cost him jobs, sometimes forcing him to dip into his savings and retirement funds. Each time, he eventually found another role. MORE