American Workers Hit Hard by Decade of Doom - AARP Bulletin Today

By: Carole Fleck | Source: AARP Bulletin Today

It’s been a dismal decade for older workers. But it didn’t start out that way.

Americans age 55 and older entered the year 2000 with optimism. One-third of them worked, and their unemployment rate was a mere 2.7 percent in January.

Fast-forward to December 2009, when the unemployment picture darkened. The number of people age 55-plus without a job grew from 490,000 at the start of the decade to 2.1 million last December, according to an AARP analysis of government data on older workers released Thursday. Though nearly 40 percent of people in that age group were working, the jobless rate spiked to 7.2 percent.

To make matters worse for boomers and other older adults, the amount of time it took to find work was devastating—35 weeks in December 2009 compared with 19 weeks in January 2000.

Older adults’ nest eggs also suffered since the recession began in December 2007, resulting in dwindling property and retirement account values. Suddenly, workers who were approaching retirement were now eager to stay on the job longer to recoup some of those losses. Some retirees sought to return to the workforce in the face of falling retirement income.
Continue Reading

Related articles by Zemanta

• Over 50 And Homeless: Recession Strikes Older Generation (huffingtonpost.com)
• Recession hits older blacks harder than general public, study says (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Job-hunting boomers, un-retiring seniors: today's employment scene (trueslant.com)