Sour economy pits age against youth

Last month, I celebrated my 20th anniversary with Consumer Reports, and while I generally don't make a big deal out of milestones, this one meant a lot. My father was a blue-collar worker who came of age during the Great Depression, and his frugal ways rubbed off on me. He advised me to keep my money in the bank, never invest in anything riskier than a CD, and limit the balance in passbook savings account to the maximum insured by the FDIC. Since I had woefully little savings back in those days and retirement was an alien concept, his words of wisdom sounded perfectly reasonable.

When I began my journalism career after college, as a daily newspaper reporter, his guiding advice to me was "do your job, don't make waves, and stay put for for 20 years. That's when you know you've made it." I wish he was still around to celebrate this anniversary with me. Times have changed, to be sure, and very few people fortunate enough to spend so many years with a single employer.  

 

As a father of two myself, a 21-year-old who aspires to be a chef, and a 16-year-old high school senior who dreams of doing "something" in the film industry, I wonder what impact the topsy-turvy economy will have on their budding work lives. 

According to a new study by Pew Research Center's Social and Demographic Trends project, the recession is likely to present teens and twenty somethings with some painful challenges. The recession is forcing older many adults to remain in the workforce longer while keeping younger adults from taking their place among the nation's employed.

The Pew researchers say that these two trends actually predate the current downturn, but the sour economy has intensified them. Researchers expect both trends to continue even after the economy picks up. According to one government estimate, 93 percent of the growth in the U.S. labor force from 2006 to 2016 will be among workers ages 55 and older

 

The study, based on an analysis of government labor data as well as a new Pew Research national survey, finds that a big reason older adults are working longer are for the intangible benefits: they want to feel useful, productive, and engaged. Indeed, a majority of workers ages 65 and older say the main reason they work is because they want to; only about one in six say the main reason is that they need the paycheck. Nevertheless, the recession is having an unfortunate impact on many older workers. Nearly four-in-ten adults who are working past the median retirement age of 62 say they’ve had to delay their retirement because of the downturn.  Among workers ages 50 to 61, more than 60 percent say they might have to push back their expected retirement date because of current economic conditions.

 

As for younger adults, a growing share of 16- to 24-year-olds are staying in high school or college, while a diminishing share – 57 percent today, down from 66 percent in 2000 – are in the labor force. The Pew survey identified two factors that help explain these changing patterns among the young. First, more and more people strongly believe that an individual needs a college education to get ahead in life; about three-quarters of the public feels this way now, up from about half in 1978. Second, younger adults (like all adults) are being hit hard by the recession, and some may have become discouraged and dropped out of the labor market. Overall, more than four-in-ten nonworking people ages 16 to 24 say they can't find a job.

 

Age is not the only demographic characteristic of the workforce that’s changing. After rising steadily for four decades, the labor force participation rate of women has essentially flattened during this decade, while the labor force participation rate for men has continued to plummet. In fact, as of June 2009, it stood at 72 percent, the lowest level in modern history. The current economic downturn has hit men harder than women, with men suffering about two-thirds of all recession-related job losses. 

 

The survey also finds that mothers and fathers experience the tug between work and family in very different ways. Most mothers who have a child at home and a full-time job would rather be working part time, or not at all. Most working fathers who have a child at home and a full-time job are glad to be working full time.   

 

In addition, the report examines a range of other work-related issue, including job satisfaction, job security and retirement satisfaction. Key among the findings:

 

    • Security trumps salary. By a margin of nearly two-to-one, survey respondents say they would prefer a job that offers better security over one that offers more money but less stability. 

    • Despite tough times, job satisfaction remains high overall. Even in the face of widespread layoffs, pay freezes, and involuntary furloughs, around 90 percent of working adults say they are either completely (30 percent) or mostly (60 percent) satisfied with their job. In recent decades, levels of job satisfaction have tended to remain stable through good times and bad.

    • Older workers are the happiest workers. Some 54 percent of employees age 65 and older say they are "completely satisfied" with their job, compared with just 29 percent of those ages 16 to 64. The explanation stems from the fact that so many of these employees are working because they want to, not because they need to.

    • Retirement is not always voluntary. Only about half of all current retirees say they retired because they wanted to. About a third say they had to retire for health or other reasons, and about one-in-ten say they were forced out of their jobs. Even so, retirement gets high marks. Fifty-seven percent of retirees say that life after work has turned out to be very satisfying. Only about one in six were at least somewhat dissatisfied with retirement.