As one of Connecticut’s most oft-cited economists, Nick Perna has spent many days in the intellectual, moneyed halls of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Yale University, and even a stint on President Nixon’s economic advisory council.
But he loved one of his early jobs specifically for its non-intellectualism. During the summers while in high school and college, Perna happily worked among heavy-duty saws in a lumberyard where the other workers teased him for being a fancy college boy.
“They would tease me mercilessly, about absolutely everything,” Perna laughed. “It was all good-natured, but incessant.”
Perna, now primarily an economic consultant for Webster Bank, was by then fully engaged in economics studies — which he loved. But the hands-on work of the lumberyard provided a nice contrast.
“When you’re a kid, there’s something about wearing jeans to work, getting sweaty, maybe even having a couple beers with the guys after work,” he said.
Perna’s calling eventually took him away from that, but he said he still loves doing construction-type work around the house. Looking back over his list of earlier jobs, the only thing that tied them together was that he enjoyed them.
But no resume is completely sunny. Perna distinctly remembers a job he despised. All day, he would pack boxes of ribbons into larger boxes, and found himself beaten down by boredom.
“I was afraid to look at my watch, because it took forever for the day to go by,” Perna said. Eventually he stopped wearing a watch altogether. It was fitting that the ribbon factory was the nadir of his working existence: Perna and his friends had told their employment office that they’d like to find jobs that were “fun.” Their employment officer said flatly, “Work isn’t fun.”
“What a lousy piece of advice that was,” Perna said, adding, “She was absolutely wrong.”
Perna had good fortune with the rest of his jobs. As a younger man, he’d worked in an Italian delicatessen, slicing prosciutto and eating delicious sandwiches for free. He also worked for a dairy farm as part of his dissertation on wages for non-union companies.
After he dove into the economics profession, he got a job at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, recalling that the job was a “learning experience” where he had a front-row seat to some of the enormous economic events of the era, such as the first United States oil embargo in the fall of 1973. He learned to read the economic tea leaves — smarts he still uses when talking about the Connecticut economy.
Around age 30, he spent a year on the president’s Council of Economic Advisers in Washington, D.C., giving briefings to President Richard Nixon.
He later became an economic consultant with General Electric, forecasting demand for various GE products like diesel locomotives and aircraft engines. He did a bit of part-time teaching at Yale, and opened up his own consulting business.
Perna said he’d like to call that old employment worker who had such a terrible view of work, and let her know just how wrong she was. “I’ve been able to do exactly what I wanted to do,” he said.
