Crowding out younger workers ? / Older workers do not squeeze out younger employees research finds

Despite popular belief and media reports, there\’s no evidence that older workers who stay on the job longer squeeze out opportunities for younger employees. That\’s the conclusion of a comprehensive analysis and paper prepared by the Center for Retirement Research (CRR) at Boston College.

While there might be some instances of older employees crowding out younger workers within some companies, certain locales, or in localized industries, the report found there\’s no support for the notion that older workers inhibit opportunities for younger workers across the work force at large.

The CRR report examined employment and unemployment rates, wages, and hours worked in all 50 states over time (1977-2011) for three different age groups: 20 – 24 (the “young”), 25 – 54 (the “prime-aged”), and 55 – 64 (the “old”). There was a wide variation in all measures across all states and all three age groups. If older workers were crowding out younger workers, then you’d expect that states with increased rates of employment and/or wages among older workers would also lead to increases in rates of unemployment and/or wages among younger workers, but that just wasn\’t the case.

The report also looked at levels of employment both before and during the Great Recession and found no support for the notion that the recession changed the relationship between opportunities for younger and older workers. Two factors that were affected by the Great Recession were employment/unemployment rates and wages among all workers. The state of the economy and the health of specific industries impacted both factors, but there still was no evidence that employment among older workers impacted opportunities for younger workers.

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

via Do older workers squeeze out younger employees? – CBS News.

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