"The reality may be that they might have to take on what we call a 'stop-loss job,'" Lincoln says, referring to a lower-paying position the typical duppie once scoffed at.
"You have to survive before you can expand your horizons," Lincoln says. "(Stop-loss jobs) stop the loss of savings or financial reserves, or at least extend what's there so a person can continue to pay the bills."
—Rene A. Guzman, "Overeducated and underemployed," San Antonio Express-News, July 18, 2003
They are people like Maureen Miranda, 27, from Jersey City, N.J., who only two years ago was a bona fide yuppie, earning as much as $65,000 annually at her "regular" job as a Web and software designer. She also regularly charged up to $75 an hour for freelance Web design gigs.
Then the tech bust came and Miranda was laid off in May 2001. She now grabs retail work wherever and whenever she can find it, selling clothes in New Jersey boutiques and chain stores, earning between $7 and $10 an hour.
—Leslie Haggin Geary, "Here come the 'duppies'," CNN/Money, June 17, 2003
In the mid-80s, duppie had a similar meaning but a different (and adjectival) expansion: downwardly mobile, urban, previously professional. Here's the earliest citation I could find for this variation:
—Annette Henkin Landau, "The yuppies of yesteryear," The New York Times, October 20, 1985
