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Boomers in the job market do the hustle
Businessmen walking
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Steve Chiotakis: The Labor Department releases its weekly report on initial jobless claims today. The unemployment rate for aging baby boomers has doubled over the past year. Marketplace's Nancy Marshall Genzer reports on the challenges facing older workers.
Nancy Marshall Genzer: Fifty-one-year-old Tom Breunig lost his marketing job in December. He's been networking furiously, but hasn't had a single interview. Now he's starting his own consulting business in Portland, Ore.
Breunig says unemployment is especially tough for boomers. They're used to the go-go 80's. Big hair, big money, lots of jobs.
Tom Breunig: There may be a feeling of entitlement which can lead, in this kind of time, to a sense of frustration.
Frustration caused by these statistics: The unemployment rate for workers aged 55 to 64 has gone from 3 [percent] to 6 percent over the past year, according to the Urban Institute.
The Institute's Sheila Zedlewski says older, male boomers have been hit hardest.
Sheila Zedlewski: The older adults working in construction, manufacturing. The kinds of industries that have been hit the hardest.
Zedlewski says college-educated boomers may have trouble finding jobs if their computer skills aren't up to scratch.
In Washington, I'm Nancy Marshall Genzer for Marketplace.
When younger people say that the boomers have had it easier, they are referring to the fact that education and social programs had much more funding when they were growing up; by contrast, those of us born after the republicans were voted into power have had the burden of graduating from college with substantial student loans. And let's not even talk about wage stagnation, the lack of health care, or the fact that the boomers and the silent generation have been voting for tax cuts to preserve their wealth at the same time that they voted to stick us with more government debt as well. It's just selfish and irresponsible. Who's the slacker now? Or should I say thief?
In response to Ms. Richmond & Ms. Hudak, Ms. Marshall Genzer did not in fact refer to the baby boomers as having an sense of entitlement, Tom Breunig did, himself a recently laid-off boomer. I sympathize with your situation but I rather feel you have directed your upset at the wrong commentator.
Thank you, Martha, for pointing out this fact of life to the obviously younger and smugger Ms. Genzer. You are so right. I've had no job security for 20 years, having been part of the yo-yo-ing high tech industry. Whenever I was able to save again during the good years, these reserves were eaten up just trying to feed myself and my family during the "down" years. Now, at age 56, after spending a couple years trying to make a career change, the economy has barricaded me from any hope of establishing myself in a new sector. And my computer skills are expert, Ms. G.
Your comment that Boomers feel entitled is completely off the charts. We were the first generation of the contingency work force. Contrary to our parent's generation, we had no job for life. I have been unemployed or self-employed 50 percent of the past 20 years. I didn't spend the 80s with big hair or making money -- I was going through the same depression in the oil patch. That's in addition to the early 90s recession, which led me to the tech sector in the 90s, which led to the dot bomb in 2000. I have no defined pension and what 401K I could build is now devastated. Age discrimination is alive and well, which is a contradiction to keeping the Boomers in the workforce longer so we don't dip into Social Security as early. Where's the entitlement? I think your story is insulting, poorly research and a fantasy in some non-Boomer's mind.
