7
Gov. Romney: 65 and out of work
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney concedes defeat to U.S. President Barack Obama Nov. 7, 2012 in Boston, Mass. If you're 65 and unemployed -- like Gov. Romney -- you're more likely to be that way for a long time.
To view this content, Javascript must be enabled and Adobe Flash Player must be installed.
After his concession speech last night, Gov. Romney joined a group that grew in size over the Great Recession: older, unemployed Americans. Granted, Gov. Romney's been unemployed for a number of years now, and it's not like he needs a job. But, work with us here -- what if Romney wasn't super rich and didn't have investments galore, what would he find at the corner of 65 and out-of-work?
Rich Morin says, first off, 65 is the new 45.
"They just aren't as wore out as my father was when he was 65," says Morin, a senior editor at the Pew Research Center. Pew surveyed older workers, and Morin says a majority of those surveyed said they worked because they wanted to, not because they had to.
And, he says, if you find yourself without a job at 65, "you're going to be mentally active, physically able, and there's only so much golf you can play. That gets old...The question is, are there jobs for them to get?"
Richard Johnson, director of the program on retirement policy at the Urban Institute has an answer to that question. "While older workers are less likely to lose their jobs than younger people," says Johnson, "when they do become unemployed it takes them a really long time to find work."
Johnson says more than half of the unemployed workers 65 and older haven't had a job for at least six months. And if you don't have a college degree, are African American or Latino, your chances of finding work at 65 are even lower.
So, let's say you've decided to stop looking for a job, and you're considering retirement. Cathy Weatherford, the president of the Insured Retirement Institute, says the first thing you must ask is: "Do you have guaranteed income every month to help you meet your fixed expenses?" Weatherford says Americans, especially baby boomers, are over-reliant on Social Security and haven't saved enough for retirement.
"If you and your spouse are now 65, there's a 50 percent chance that one of you will live to age 92 and a 25 percent chance that one of you will live to be 97," says Weatherford. She adds that you should hold off as long as you can before dipping into Social Security because you could have 30 more years of life -- and expenses -- to look forward to.
I did some research involving interviewing recent retirees about why they retired - "what changes between, say, 45 when they "own" their world and 65 when they give it all up and walk away. I was particularly interested in people who where "called" to their careers such as physicians or ministers. Indeed, to address jeffjos' point, my subjects were all "white collar".
The strongest themes I discerned were:
A. desire to see shorter-term and more concrete results; let's call this "impatience"
&
B. desire for new challenges/engagement; let's call this "boredom"
It seems to me that addressing "elder workers" has huge policy implications for some of the critical issues the nation faces.
Perhaps Ms Meraji could look into what appears to me to be a paradox or weakness in basic economic principles:
Given that white males of the "baby boomer" cohort must be the most experienced and best educated - and possibly healthiest - group in history, wouldn't one expect that massive human capital to be in demand; especially given the high rate of un- & underemployment?
Surely such an undervalued resource would be exploited.
Those of us who are male and on the cutting edge of the BabyBoom (AlphaBoomers) are not only dealing with the challenge of age discrimination when trying to re-enter the workforce. When I was restructured out of my management job in 2007, applying for full-time work, and receiving no acknowledgement of my application, it soon became apparent that it was going to be nearly impossible to land a job in the near future. So, I decided to become an entrepreneur and build a local business around my skill sets. After 5 years, I've learned that I don't have the sales chops to make an entrepreneurial business viable so I've been searching for full-time employment. However, most of the positions I'm applying for seem to have been previously filled by women and my sense is that HR and employers are reluctant to replace a female with a male. My sense is that, when I apply for such a job, I'm not even being considered as a viable candidate.
In your story, Cathy Weatherford talks about people who are now my age living into their 90s. Recently, I also heard another statistic that the number of people in the US who are 100 or older will increase from 75,000 this year to over 6 million within the next 40 years. That's a lot of BabyBoomers. And, although danshunlili notes that a lot of people dream of retiring in their 50s, there are also a lot of us who have no interest in retiring and who would prefer to continue contributing to the economy in a productive way. There are also a lot of Boomers who won't be able to afford to retire and will need to continue working in order to support themselves well into their 80s.
I realize that we need to create productive employment opportunities for Gen Y'ers who are the future of America. However, it seems to me that we BabyBoomers are also a natural resource who can continue to contribute to the growth of the US economy and, by being employed, can continue to contribute to the coffers of Social Security rather than deplete them. In fact, I've created a Linkedin group, Ambitious Energized Alpha Boomers to foster discussions and share ideas about how we can accomplish just that. If you were born between 1946-1956 and you're a Linkedin member, I hope that you'll join in the discussion and share your ideas, too.
One thing Ms. Meraji doesn't touch on in this article is the effect of age discrimination on those of us that are over 65. I first noticed the effects of age discrimination around the age of 50. After age 50 I had to fight tooth and nail for each job I had. Time after time I faced age discrimination when applying for a job. It got to the point where I could look into the eyes of a human resource manager or whoever was doing the interview that I stood absolutely no chance of getting the job I was after despite being highly qualified for the job. Things steadily got worse as I aged even though I feel that I could handle any job that I applied for. Now that I am over 65 I have pretty much given up. Now that I am on Medicare and receiving a modest amount from Social Security I am faced with an additional obstacle in that during bad economic times I wouldn't want to take away a menial job at minimum wage that someone else who is less fortunate might need to survive. While not technically a baby boomer I consider myself a point man for the baby boomers and hopefully as the baby boomers come on line maybe employers will realize that they are missing out on a very valuable resource in workers of age.
Agree with jeffjos. Also, even in the non-heavy labor set, which is my workplace type, the vast majority of those over 55 (let alone 65) spend a major portion of their day dreaming of retiring. Those over 55 , and even over 50 , commonly want only to work part-time and only at their convienence (maybe 4 hrs. today, but not 6 hrs. tomorrow, as that will mess with their recreation schedule). And these are non heavy labor working class people, NOT high end Wall street types. It's difficult to hire an older worker these days that wants a full time job in my area -- they seem to want sort of recreational part time jobs with the option of checking out if they bore of it; thus not really the type you want if you need to count on them to come to work.
You people have no concept of what work is for working class people. Try peddling your baloney to a 55 year old on a Ford assembly line who has been there since age 18. Cant climb the stairs to his bedroom because his knees hurt so bad he sleeps on the couch in the Living Room. This is what millions of working people face every day. Try spending one day at a Ford Plant or a construction site.
