The steady
improvement in the job market is good news for all Americans, but a
detailed look at the data shows that older workers have been the
biggest beneficiaries.
The number of people over age 55 who have a job has increased
by 1.69 million over the past year, to nearly 30.2 million workers,
according to data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as
part of the monthly employment report.
That’s a far larger increase than for any other age group. By contrast,
the number of jobholders age 25 to 54 has increased by just 322,000
over the same period, even though that group includes more than three
times as many total workers.
In total, about 2.51 million more people were employed in February vs.
a year earlier, according to the household survey of Americans
conducted monthly by the BLS.
The unemployment rate for workers 55 and over, at 5.9 percent, is also
lower than for any other age group.
“Obviously you have a lot of older workers that want to stay in the
labor force,” said Dean Baker, an economist with the Center for
Economic and Policy Research who noted the trend.
Baker said there are several reasons why older workers appear to be
doing better.
One is demographics: As the American population ages, more people are
turning 55 and being calculated as part of the cohort. That helps
explain why those figures are growing.
But another element is economics. Older people who may once have
considered retiring are now holding on to their jobs or seeking new
jobs, either because their retirement nest egg has diminished or they
need the health care benefits that come with a solid job, Baker said.
Peter Simons, 57, and his wife are among the older workers who had
expected to be at least semi-retired by now but instead are still
working.
Simons moved to Bend, Ore., from California in 2004 with the hope of
working for a while longer and then retiring. But when the economy
started to turn and the housing market in the area went downhill, he
saw a sharp drop in his computer repair business. Even now, he said,
business is only about half what it was in 2007.
His wife, meanwhile, was working at a lumber mill but business there
started to drop. Worried about a layoff, Simons said she found another
job at a local resort a couple years ago.
The couple feel fortunate that she got, and has been able to hold onto,
that job. That’s partly because it comes with health insurance benefits.
“One of the big components of why we haven’t been able to consider
retirement is because of what we would do for health care,” Simons
said. “It’s not just a question of being able to afford the premium for
health care - it’s finding anyone that would be able to give us
health care because we both have pre-existing conditions.”
If they do wind up without health insurance, Simons said a last resort
would be to move back to his native England. He hasn’t lived there
since 1980 and would much prefer to remain in the United States, but he
sees few other options if they end up unemployed before Medicare kicks
in.
“The simple reality is we simply cannot retire and not have health
insurance, because we could be wiped out,” he said.
Despite the lower unemployment rate, older workers do have good reason
to fear a job loss: They can expect a long slog to find a new job. A
separate set of government data shows that the median amount of time it
takes unemployed people ages 55 to 64 to find a new job is 31.4 weeks,
higher than for any other age group.
