US Job Generation Gap / We’re All In This Together

We’re in the midst of the worst employment crisis in modern memory. Lackluster jobs reports like last week’s should remind us that the crisis will last a long, long time, unless we act. It would be tragic if superficial “improvements” created by discouraged workers dropping out of the labor force become an excuse for continued inaction – or worse.

But buried in the discouraging data are figures that could become the seeds of a new intergenerational alliance.

Generation Gap

Some of those numbers can be found in this chart, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

It shows that the financial crisis of 2008 has had a devastating impact on employment for adult Americans under 65, a time of life once described as “working age.” The crisis has been most severe for teenagers, then for people in their twenties. The figures stabilize at grim but less severe levels for Americans up to the age of 60.

Then something significant happens.  At the age of sixty, men have continued to experience job loss. But more women are employed now than were working before the financial crisis.  From the age on 65 upwards, both sexes are more likely to be working now than before the crisis.

The figures are especially striking – and disturbing – for women. Women between the ages of 65 and 70 are more than 15 percent more likely to be working now, and women over 70 are more than 10 percent more likely to be on the job.

Vanishing Point

This doesn’t mean employers have suddenly developed an enthusiasm for hiring elderly men and women to fill their job vacancies. In all likelihood, these numbers mean that fewer aging Americans have the financial means to retire.

A New Alliance?

The fight to protect America’s elderly is the same fight that must be waged for the young. It’s the fight to increase, not decrease, Social Security benefits (which even the youngest American will hopefully collect one day). It’s the fight to invest in jobs now, so that America’s young can begin their work lives and enjoy them more prosperously. It’s the fight for fair taxation and an end to exploding inequalities in income and wealth.

There is only one fight, and it’s everybody’s fight.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at 

via Across Generations, The Jobs Numbers Show We’re All In This Together.