NEW YORK -- At Sarabeth's restaurant on Central Park South, two young old friends are catching up and comparing notes over breakfast.

Anyone seated nearby quickly learns the story. They met in graduate school; both hold MBAs. Both recently have joined the swelling ranks of America's unemployed.

Their shared tales, if once unthinkable, are becoming increasingly familiar. First, blue-collar jobs disappeared. Now white collars are fading. The young and briefly affluent, accustomed to earning more than $75,000, suddenly have time on their hands, the latest victims of the current economic crunch.

Now what?

The young woman has some consulting work "kind of lined up." Her severance package is too high to qualify for unemployment, and she's not sure how long her funds will last. She might head home to visit her dad, whom she hasn't seen in a year -- "too busy." Or, she always wanted to drive cross-country.

Her male companion, similarly laid off, is freelancing real estate development projects, but looking for a permanent job.

Something has gone terribly wrong with the American dream. No longer is a college degree -- or even an advanced degree -- a guarantee of employment or job security. Suddenly, there seem to be an awful lot of "consultants" floating around, lingering longer than usual over coffee because there's no office to get back to.

My 28-year-old niece, with whom I am staying (the rate is unbeatable), is similarly and suddenly "consulting" -- mostly through the want ads on MediaBistro and Craigslist these days. The magazine for which she's been a marketing strategist is suffering financial woes and has had to cut several positions, including hers.

"Consulting" and "freelancing" are old euphemisms for a new demographic, the upscale terms for "outta work." Down on their luck, these newbies to the unemployment lines aren't living paycheck to paycheck. "We're living gig to gig," says my niece.

How many consultants can dine on the dime of a tanking economy?

A new poll by Tina Brown's Daily Beast and Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates confirms that the Sarabeth's pair and my niece are not isolated anecdotes, but are part of a trend no one would have imagined a few years ago. "Gigonomics," Brown calls it. Continued...