A recent reports shows how Seniors are being forced to work longer (and they will work cheaper) competing with ‘prime earners’ for jobs (with ‘prime earners’ losing) for the 1.9 million jobs created since 2009.. Will this trend increase?
Many seniors say they plan to postpone retirement or work indefinitely, and the data shows they’re doing just that. For the last decade, the overall labor-force participation rate–the percentage of the population that wants to work–has been gradually shrinking. But for workers 55 and over it’s been going straight up. At the beginning of 2001, for instance, about 33 percent of seniors counted themselves as part of the labor force. Right before the recession started, in 2007, it was about 39 percent. The participation rate dropped sharply for all other age groups during the recession, as people gave up looking for work, went back to school, or decided to stay home for awhile to help with the kids. But for seniors it inched up, and is now at 40 percent–about 7 points higher than a decade ago. On one hand, it’s good news that older workers are able to keep a paycheck coming, and build (or rebuild) their nest eggs–and that employers are willing to hire them. But they may also be taking jobs that would go to younger workers. And rising later-life employment is probably a sign of economic stress that could last awhile.
A major midlife job crisis. The overall job market is clearly healing, but middle-aged workers aren’t part of the revival. Workers between the ages of 45 and 54 are still losing jobs on net, with a decline of about 364,00 jobs in this age group so far this year. That seems remarkable–and worrisome–given that these are people in their prime earning years, and they also ought to be at peak levels of expertise in their fields or careers. Yet they’re not yet participating in the jobs recovery, perhaps because their pay requirements are too high in an economy where employers still aren’t willing to bring back the most expensive workers. Many are most likely middle managers whose ranks were severely thinned during the recession, or construction and manufacturing workers who still can’t find work, and may never be able to in their current fields.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Why-the-MiddleAged-Are-usnews-1156971570.html?x=0
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