Many older people are still working. But the vast majority of those 65+ are working in retail. According to the L.A. Times, a new report scheduled for release in June show that 350,000 men and women 65 and older work in retail. They are working for a variety of reasons. Many of them say they want or need to work past retirement. Unfortunately, most employers are reluctant to hire them.
Statistics from the Urban Institute show that older workers are likely to work in retail, farming or janitorial work. Twice as many older workers are in retail than the next two occupations combined, contributing to what call the “Wal-Mart decade.” Working in retail does offer some benefits. These are flexibility, jobs, and some benefits. Home Depot is an example of a company that is eager to hire older workers. It hooked up with the AARP to entice older workers to come to work for them. They point out that older workers are loyal and dependable. They also point out that the entire work force is growing older.
I wrote earlier about the problems Atlanta Grady’s Memorial hospital is experiencing. Since then it has been reported that more of Atlanta’s medical facilities will drop their trauma care designations or devote fewer resources to caring for life-threatening injuries. It turns out Los Angeles County is experiencing some of the same problems. Martin Luther King, one of its trauma center has been forced to shut down its emergency services, and a recent report by the L.A. Times shows that its soon to be open replacement hospital for the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center is the victim of downsizing.
It’s not just the Medi-Cal patients who might otherwise seek services at County-USC. A study by the Hospital Assn. of California determined that the entire area suffers as a result of this downsizing. That’s because private hospitals in the area experience an increase in patients in their emergency rooms as a result of this downsizing, causing greater delays in service. In addition, if the county hospital doesn’t have enough beds patients will have to travel further to get service, tying up ambulances.
The science, engineering, technology professions also referred to as SET are disproportionately male. This despite the fact that 46 percent of the Ph.D.s in the biological sciences are awarded to women; 31 percent in chemistry are awarded to women; and 21 percent in engineering are awarded to women. It’s not that women are not doing well in the SET professions: 41 percent of entry level workers in the SET professions are women. Its not that they don‘t perform well: 75 percent of women compared to 61 percent of males age 25 to 29 receive positive evaluations.The reason is that around the age of 40, women leave the science, engineering, and technology fields in droves.
The reason is culture. According to a recent survey that is expected to be published in the Harvard Business Review in June, men in these professions are often hostile to women in the profession; (63 percent of women say they experienced harassment on the job); and have dismissive attitudes toward female colleagues (53 percent said in order to succeed in their careers they had to “act like a man”). Women lack of mentors (51 percent of engineers say they lack one). Finally, the report shows that the hours are ones that suit men with wives at home but not working mothers (41 percent of technology workers says they need to be available “24/7”).
Women are in fact being driven out of the professions by a machismo culture that is hostile to women. This is a liability for the US economy. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that jobs in these industries will grow 5 times faster than in other industries. It is also a liability for women. In the new workplace, most new jobs created are expected to be in the low wage sector. If women leave the field to men, they run the risk of consigning themselves to lower wage jobs that offer few opportunities.
There’s quite a bit of info out there on baby boomers and retirement. One site I found was CNBC’s BoomerAngst. One of the problems it highlights is boomers lack of preparedness for retirement. It is an established fact that boomers are not saving nearly enough, that employer provided pension plans have pretty much gone the way of the dinosaurs, and that social security won’t be enough to compensate for those shortfalls. Sixty percent of boomers have less than $100,000 in savings, 40% less than $25,000, and 30% less than $10,000. To make matters worse 50% don’t know how much they need for retirement. Click here to view the clip of CNBC’s interview with Charles Schwab.
Ron Lieber with the New York Times offers 5 basic guidelines on how to manage our personal finance. Briefly, these are:
- Save money in a collection of low-cost index funds.
- Pay for financial planning.
- Get information from peers to supplement professional advice.
- Use automated bill-paying systems.
- Discuss your parents financial situation with them. (The erosion of employer pension plans, and the low savings rate among Americans means that you may have to assume some financial support for your parents after they retire. Your financial planning should take this in consideration.)
To understand the reasons behind these suggestions, read his New York Times article.
There is a reason workers are feeling squeezed. In addition to the housing situation, employment is a problem for many Americans. The Department of Labor’s latest report shows that there was a large increase in the number of individuals working part-time for economic reasons. Between April 2007 and April 2008 the number of part-time workers increased by 306,000. The reason they gave for working part time was because their hours had been cut back or they could not find fulltime work.
The report also shows that about 1.4 million individuals wanted and were available for work, but had given up because they did not believe work was available for them. These figures are not reflected in the unemployment rate, and indicate that the employment situation is worse than what the unemployment rate indicates.
At this point most American workers understand that this downward pressure on jobs is largely due to globalization as good paying jobs continue to be outsourced to places like China and India.
The Los Angeles Times reported a couple of months that a growing practice is for investors to buy insurance policies for the elderly in return for the death benefits. This practice require the elderly to sign over death benefits to investors and after an agreed upon time receive money compensation. Since the elderly are guaranteed to die, the investment is guaranteed to pay off.
Investors are beginning to pool these investments and sell them as a package. Face value for policies bought for the secondary market rose to $6.1 billion in 2006 up from $2 billion in 2002. Experts are predicting this figure could reach $20 billion this year.
Insurance companies don’t like this practice because it threatens their profits. Advocates for the elderly argue that it makes the elderly lives into commodities. It’s being marketed just like any commodity with flyers printed and distributed at places where the elderly gather.
There are other reasons to be concerned about this practice. Because the insured are only allowed a limited amount of insurance, if they’ve contracted out the full amount to investors, they may not be able to buy insurance for themselves. There is also the possibility that the elderly can become victimized by strangers who may not want to wait for a natural death in order to collect.
The new Department of Labor report validates the belief that much of future job demand will be in health care sectors. These are jobs that provide some sort of care for the elderly, disabled and very young. I believe present and future workers should use this information to exert pressure on the industry to improve working conditions including pay and compensation.
A brief summary of the latest report:
The U.S. labor department reported job loss were 20,000, far fewer than the 80,000 that had been projected. Still they represented a decreased chance for job seekers to obtain jobs. So far the economy has undergone a four-month period of monthly job losses. This is the longest period since 2008 when the economy was in the jobless recovery. Job losses were biggest in construction and goods producing industries. Gains were greatest in the service industry, most from health care and professional technical services sector.
