CANTON, Mass. -- The thermometer reads 10 degrees at 8 a.m. A northern gale sharpens the bitter cold.

Stoically, Richard Wilcox stands at a busy street corner clutching a sign that reads: "I NEED A JOB ... 36 YRS EXPER; INSUR/MNGMNT." Included is his phone number.

"Some people might find what I'm doing embarrassing," says Mr. Wilcox, who has become a morning-commute fixture in this suburb south of Boston for almost three months. "But desperate times call for desperate measures."

Desperation in Mr. Wilcox's case means approaching the end of his savings -- and meager retirement-plan assets -- after exhausting unemployment benefits and severance. Sixty-two years old and married, with three grown children, he was laid off from his middle-management job at Boston Mutual Life Insurance Co. a year ago. Now down to their last $2,500, the Wilcoxes' relatively comfortable middle-class lifestyle may soon be coming to an end.

In the past, people laid off at Mr. Wilcox's age might have considered retirement. But, as is typical of a growing number of workers, he lacks a traditional pension. He couldn't live on the $1,200 a month that Social Security would pay, and he doesn't own a home. So he has little choice but to search for a job.

Looking for work is never easy. But in this era of post-terror turbulence, times are especially tough. With the financial excesses of the 1990s still unwinding and a looming war taking its toll on the financial markets, many businesses are reluctant to hire. The job market is deteriorating and it's hard for employers and job seekers alike to predict when things might pick up.

It's particularly rough on older white-collar workers such as Mr. Wilcox. When he was let go, his salary was $65,000 a year. To try to preserve his standard of living, he has been seeking a management post with a salary of at least $50,000. But demand for such positions is much weaker than the national 5.7% unemployment rate would indicate. For people in professional and business service, a subcategory that includes insurance managers and similar white-collar work, the unemployment rate is 8.9%, according to the latest Department of Labor figures.

Despite laws against age discrimination, employers are avoiding older workers, partly for fear that they will push up already-high health-insurance premiums, says Christian Weller, an analyst for the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. Employers also are reluctant to hire and train older workers who might retire in a few years. They worry such workers will file age-discrimination lawsuits if they are dismissed.

"It is much easier not to invite someone in for an interview," says Mr. Wilcox. "That way you don't expose yourself to any liability."

Despite the raking wind, he leaves the hood of his parka down "so they can see I have an honest face," he says. His coat is unbuttoned "so they can see what's underneath," a neatly pressed suit and tie. "I hope when they see the attire they know I mean business," he says, stamping his feet to keep warm.

After 390 days of actively seeking work, including sending out more than 700 resumes online, by mail and in person, and standing in the dead of winter holding his sign, Mr. Wilcox has had two interviews, both with insurance firms.

Michele Wilcox, his wife, says she feels helpless. A freelance designer, she has added to the family income by selling her crochet patterns to magazines, earning as much as $25,000 a year. But that has fallen to about $9,000 in the last 12 months as consolidation in the magazine business has shrunk her opportunities.

"Sometimes I just want to scream," says Mrs. Wilcox, who is 56. "Dick has been the breadwinner all these years. I feel so guilty that I can't pick up where he's left off."

The Wilcoxes consider the sacrifices they've made so far to be small. Sustained by $21,000 in severance plus nine months of unemployment benefits, their lifestyle has frayed at the edges but not collapsed. "We don't eat out any more," Mrs. Wilcox says. Weekend getaways to Vermont also have been eliminated. Instead of buying gifts, Mrs. Wilcox knitted clothing and home decorations as Christmas presents for her children and relatives. The Wilcoxes have scratched plans to replace their rusty 12-year-old Mitsubishi Galant.

But now, with only $2,500 left, the Wilcoxes face imminent hard choices. The rent on their four-bedroom house is $2,000 a month. Health-insurance premiums are $1,200. Food, utilities, car insurance and other expenses bring the total to $4,000. Unless Mr. Wilcox can get a job near the pay level he is seeking, with health insurance, he and his wife figure they will have to move and look for lower-paid hourly work. Mr. Wilcox is reasonably confident he could get a job as a security guard for $10 or $12 an hour.

The Wilcoxes love their house, which once served as a caretaker's cottage on a big estate. Looking out on rolling hills and tree-lined meadows from the porch, Mrs. Wilcox is misty-eyed. "If we have to move, we're really going to miss this place," she says. "On a lazy summer afternoon you can just sit here forever."

Mr. Wilcox likens his street-corner advertising, on the intersection of two major thoroughfares, to "gutsy" things he has done all his life. Growing up in Daytona Beach, Fla., he rode his tricycle at age four to the railroad station and boarded a train "just for the thrill of it," he recalls. His father, a correspondent for Life Magazine, was in the Pacific covering World War II. His mother was in the hospital. Reported missing by relatives, he made national news as the victim of a possible kidnapping, until he was found by railroad officials in Atlanta the following day.

His parents eventually divorced. In his mother's custody, Mr. Wilcox "became the man of the family," he says. He delivered newspapers, worked other jobs and cared for his siblings while his mother worked. When he was 12, the family moved to Connecticut because his mother had found a new job.

Mr. Wilcox aimed for Columbia University and dreamed of being a college professor. But high-school jobs didn't help his grades. After his freshman year at Hobart College, he enlisted in the Army rather than be drafted. In the summer of 1961, his unit, the 18th Infantry, was called on to break the Russian blockade of West Berlin, in one of the most tense episodes of the Cold War.

A yellowed copy of the Aug. 21, 1961, edition of the New York Times, with a picture of the 18th rolling through West Berlin on the front, lies in Mr. Wilcox's study. He calls it a remembrance of "yet another defining moment of gutsiness."

Mr. Wilcox dropped out of college near the end of his senior year in 1966 and took a job as an assistant underwriter at Hartford Insurance Group, in Connecticut, where he met Michele, then a trainee. They married that year and Mrs. Wilcox quit to raise their children.

Up the Ladder

Mr. Wilcox worked his way up the ladder as an underwriter, at first handling small policies, and then big corporate clients. He switched jobs within the industry several times to raise his pay. Concerned about impending layoffs in 1981, he quit his job as a senior underwriter at Puritan Life Insurance Co. in Providence, R.I., and moved to Denver for a position with Rocky Mountain Life Insurance, a unit of Blue Cross Blue Shield. As operations director, he had one of the top five positions in the 80-employee firm.

Several of Mr. Wilcox's former employers describe him as a good worker. At Rocky Mountain, he was in charge of pricing policies for companies and "always managed to come up with a rate that kept us competitive," says Jerry Robinson, then the company's president and now retired. "Dick reported directly to me and for the four years he worked for us we always made money. I attribute a good part of that to him."

In 1987, missing their families in New England, the Wilcoxes returned East, hoping also to keep their teenage children from settling in the West. Mr. Wilcox found a job as a senior contract analyst with Boston Mutual Insurance Co. As a midlevel manager, he ensured that policies were in regulatory compliance as insurance law changed.

His layoff notice in February 2002, after 15 years at the company, came as a shock. He returned home that evening and headed straight for his study. "I needed some quiet time for reflection," he recalls, but after about half an hour he emerged "full charged." A manager at Boston Mutual declined to comment on his dismissal or his work record, citing the company's confidentiality policy.

With his $21,000 severance payment in the bank, Mr. Wilcox felt it was "a time for new beginnings," he says. He expected to get work if not at another insurer, then in the human resources department of a major corporation.

After a brief vacation in Vermont, Mr. Wilcox called a few old friends in the industry. Mostly midlevel types like himself, they weren't much help, and referred him to job-hunt Web sites such as Monster.com. He sent resumes to about 350 companies advertising openings online.

Weeks went by and Mr. Wilcox didn't hear from anyone. "The job market was just a little slower than usual, but the phone should be ringing any time now," he says he thought. Economists were predicting a pickup in the economy in the latter half of 2002. But weeks of no response soon turned into months. "I was working the Net six to eight hours a day," he says. "I'd log onto the Web sites of 20 companies a day, look at their job postings and send them a resume followed up with e-mail reminders."

Most days, Mr. Wilcox spends all morning and a good part of the afternoon on the computer trolling the Web for job prospects. Monster.com is usually his first stop. He also logs onto JobCenter.com; Bostonworks, Careerbuilders, Hotjobs and Bostonjobs. He also visits the Web sites of insurance companies, including John Hancock, a unit of John Hancock Financial Services Inc., Sun Life and Guardian Life, a unit of Guardian Inc. "Those are usually the only ones that have jobs," he said. "Everyone's downsizing."

Winter and spring passed. By summer, Mr. Wilcox began to get anxious. So he decided to pound the pavement "like they used to do in the old days," he says. At first he began visiting office parks within a five-mile radius of his home. He then expanded the compass on the map to wider and wider circles, eventually visiting companies 50 miles away.

Cold-calling companies, Mr. Wilcox quickly learned a lesson. "You just don't do that anymore in a post-Sept. 11 era," he says. He was often asked to leave by building security, or told to mail his resume or call for an appointment -- which he did. The few callbacks he received were disappointing. One annoyed personnel official asked: "Why do I have your resume?"

Last summer Mr. Wilcox got a call from Sun Life Insurance Co., a unit of Toronto-based Sun Life Financial Inc. with offices in Wellesley, a Boston suburb. A personnel representative told him that a position he had applied for was to be filled by someone else but that there were a couple of other positions for which he could be qualified.

Mr. Wilcox grew optimistic. Wellesley was well within commuting distance. The jobs were in risk management, work he considers himself good at. After an interview with the head of human resources, he was told his resume would be forwarded to the managers doing the hiring. He never got a call. A manager and a company spokesman at Sun Life declined to comment.

In November, he received a call from Dentaquest Ventures Inc., a big Boston provider of dental insurance, inviting him for an interview. Mr. Wilcox sent his gray pin stripes to the cleaners.

After he arrived at the company's offices, Mr. Wilcox grew even more excited. Interviewed by a vice president, he was commended for his diverse background in insurance. His lack of experience in dental coverage was not a problem, he was told, and a follow-up interview was promised. But in early December a letter came from Dentaquest saying that the company had selected another candidate. Beth Richard, a marketing manager at the company, says the company eventually decided not to fill the position.

Mr. Wilcox had run out of unemployment benefits and used up his severance. He began to tap into his 401(k) retirement plan, then valued at about $13,000. He had contributed about $22,000 to the plan during his last four years on the job, and his employer had kicked in a little. But the money had been invested in mutual funds, which took a pounding as the market plunged. Like most Americans, his other savings were negligible. The costs of raising a family of three children, he says, were just too high to put much aside.

Desperation

As Christmas approached, Mr. Wilcox was overcome by a sense of desperation. He bought heavy-duty cardboard at Home Depot and made a 6-by-4-foot sign, large enough for passing motorists to notice. He took to the busy intersection a couple of weeks before Christmas, hoping the holiday spirit might move someone to respond to his job plea.

Mr. Wilcox has been holding his sign every work day between about 7 and 9 a.m. ever since. Sometimes truck drivers raise their fists in solidarity or honk their horns. A few people have rolled down their windows to tell him that they're out of work, too. Other motorists have given him the finger.

But job offers have been limited. Early on, Mr. Wilcox says he turned down the chance for a day's work as a plumbing assistant, figuring his time was better spent job hunting. Another person offered him $10 an hour in catering. Mr. Wilcox says he is still holding out for a job that would let him keep the house.

One evening a few weeks ago, he received a phone call from someone calling herself Barbara asking if he still needed a job. "I'm interested," Mr. Wilcox said. The caller then transferred him to a recorded message describing details of the work, including "a small sum of money" needed from Mr. Wilcox to get started. As Mr. Wilcox was about to hang up, Barbara came back on the line.

"This isn't really a job," Mr. Wilcox said angrily.

"Yes, but this is a great opportunity for you to buy your way into a distribution franchise," she replied. He hung up.

On the street in Canton one Friday morning, Mr. Wilcox caught the eye of a driver in a sport-utility vehicle. The driver pulled into a nearby parking lot and motioned Mr. Wilcox toward him. "I know someone in Boston who's looking for an insurance consultant," the driver said, with the motor running. A husband and wife, both former dot-commers, were starting an environmental-cleanup business and needed someone with a strong insurance background, the driver said. The wife's name, he added, was Stephanie White.

"What's the husband's name?" Mr. Wilcox asked.

The motorist couldn't remember. "I think they live in West Roxbury," he blurted, before rushing off.

When Mr. Wilcox returned home, he picked up the phone book for Boston, which contains the West Roxbury neighborhood. There was no listing for a Stephanie White. Running his finger down the directory under the surname "White," he counted at least 50 phone numbers. He decided to postpone his search until after he took his wife to a doctors appointment.

When he returned that afternoon, he resumed his search for Stephanie White, calling four of the White listings in the Boston book. No Stephanie at any of them. Mr. Wilcox then did a Web phone-directory search for "White" in Boston. None of the 97 listings was for a Stephanie. "It's like looking for a needle in a haystack," he complained.

With his grandchildren -- Noah, age 3, and Charles, 4 -- shortly due for a visit, he gave up for the moment, and vowed to call more Whites later. In difficult times "there's nothing like the closeness of family," Mrs. Wilcox said. "We look forward to seeing them every week so much."

Children of about the same age often press their noses against car windows to stare at Mr. Wilcox in the morning. "They think I'm the next best thing to a circus coming to town," he said. Some parents turn to their children "and point to me as they drive by," he said. "My guess is they're saying, 'don't grow up to be like him.' "

Mr. Wilcox often wonders what his late father "would say today if he saw me standing here." He still hasn't told his mother, who lives in San Francisco, that he's out of work. Every week, when they talk on the telephone she asks, "How's your job?" He answers, "Fine, ma."