His 1970 salary would have been $100,000, but he was no longer employable - blacklisted by the owners - despite his talent.
I spoke to McMullan about how he's no longer employable, his attempts to break back into journalism by buying his own surveillance van, his opinion of the Leveson Inquiry and what he thinks of the continuing battle to regulate the press.
Economists warned that long-term unemployment could be transformed in the next few years into structural unemployment, meaning that the problem is not just too few jobs and too many job seekers, but a large group of workers who no longer match employers' needs or are no longer considered employable.
There also may be an effect on employment: Workers may become less employable the longer they remain outside the work force, creating a long-term reduction in the supply of available labor.
In many cases, the longer people stay unemployed, the less employable they become.
And the warning in these papers that labour market weakness will persist for some time is not encouraging; the longer workers go without jobs, the less employable they become.
Blasting out U2's Beautiful Day each morning to get herself out of bed, Cutler set two goals: "In the short term, to become employable again and in the longer term, to get my independence back.
Moreover, a central concern that remains is whether ALMPs are suitable to address longer-term matters such as skills and employability, especially among the least employable jobless individuals.
The average duration of unemployment continues to break records, after all, and studies have shown that the longer people are out of work, the less employable they become.
As months go by, the friends start to face the possibility that the American economy might no longer need "four generous/selfish, mellow/excitable, unique/ordinary, and highly employable individuals".
However, the longer the period of inactivity, the less immediately employable the person becomes.
