Workers over 50 are the new 'unemployables'

[ProfessionalLeftist]

Unemployed workers in their fifties are increasingly finding themselves stuck in limbo.

On one hand, they're too young to retire. They may also be too old to get re-hired.

Call them the "new unemployables," say researchers at Boston College.

Older workers were less likely to lose their jobs during the recession, but those who were laid off are facing far tougher conditions than their younger colleagues. Workers in their fifties are about 20% less likely than workers ages 25 to 34 to become re-employed, according to an Urban Institute study published last year.

"Once you leave the job market, trying to get back in it is a monster," said Mary Clair Matthews, 58, who has teetered between bouts of unemployment and short temp jobs for the last five years. She applies for jobs every week, but most of the time, her applications hit a brick wall.

MORE...

http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/26/news/economy/over-50-unemployables/index.html

(Republicans: "Oh well that's just "the market"! - Over 50 and unemployed but can't retire until 70? DROP. DEAD.&quot

[MannyGoldstein]

1. I have a number of 50ish friends who've lost jobs in the past year or two.

It's a disaster for them.

People with Ivy League degrees and successful careers, utterly fucked.

[ProfessionalLeftist]

2. WTH do the assholes running the US expect these people to do?

As they keep raising the retirement age - when by all rights, it ought to be lowered to 55.

(yea, i know what they want people to do: drop dead) -- but that can't stand.

[MannyGoldstein]

4. The assholes don't actually care

It's just not very important to them.

[zazen]

8. I think in NC some secretly hope the expendables will die

Lack of health care for even more high risk problems is a serious issue for the 50-65 year old bracket, so beyond homelessness is letting conditions go untreated.

And these GOP reps don't care. They've severely cut unemployment benefits. They've turned down Medicaid that would have allowed 500k more NC residents to have health care. They have DIRECTLY turned away money that would be pumped into our economy immediately. They know this. So, another value is operating here.

I really do intuit on some deeper level that this is a type of culling.

They are treating the poor (long-term and newly poor) as if we're vermin to be cleaned out of society.

And now McCrory wants to give illegal immigrants PINK ID cards. Why doesn't he just sew a star on their clothes and be done with it.

[Octafish]

11. If they wanted to have money and healthcare, they shoulda been born rich.

That's the way it'd always been until 1776 (and revised in 1863 and updated in 1964 with more than a few points in-between).

[HangOnKids]

21. The Lucky Sperm Club

Because EVERYONE can just choose their parents!

[samplegirl]

3. Living this now.....

Husband lost his job in June and we are both 55 years old. My fear is he will never work again and I am working part-time at a job on my feet retail busy all day. I come home dragging everynight.

[GoCubsGo]

13. Me, too.

Got laid off on the cusp of the recession. Just turned 52. I got by on my savings, temp jobs, and some contract work, but that's all long gone. I have a masters degree, which makes me over-qualified for most of the stuff that's out there. Plus, I have to compete with recently laid-off government workers, and veterans. I can't tell you how many times I have gotten reject letters from the feds for jobs for which I am overqualified, saying that enough vets who met the minimum standards applied, so they weren't even going to look at me. Somebody else in this thread said that they're really just waiting for us all to die. They'll probably get their wish with me. I'll likely die of stress-related illness before I see anything resembling a job offer.

[duffyduff]

14. The only thing I can get after five years is substituting

The problem with that is school districts deliberately overhire people for sub jobs so that few people can make much money at it...I have been so broke I can't afford a regular Oregon teaching license. $95 for the special ed test is a MAJOR expense. I might be able to do it this year and try to get a long-term sub job next year.

Yes, sub teachers in Oregon can make about $162 a day, but the problem is you may work once or twice a week--if that. It's still not enough to support oneself.

[chervilant]

15. Here in Arkansas,

subs make $75 a day.

I suspect our cost of living is lower ...

BTW, I've been un- or under-employed for five years now. I noted upthread that others are or have been considering their Kevorkian solution. I think now that I'll go down fighting! If I'm homeless by the end of March, I'll make my way to DC and be a thorn in the corporatists' sides for as long as possible.

[duffyduff]

20. Low figures like that are more common

In Oregon, you have to have at least a bachelor's degree to substitute teach, and if you have a long-term sub position of more than three months, you MUST be a regular certified teacher in that particular subject area.

The $162.00 sounds like a lot, but then the school districts are glutted with substitute teachers, so the income you make isn't enough to support yourself overall.

I am on two separate substitute lists, and there are perhaps 300 people on each. The school districts around here are not large.

[MindPilot]

5. 59, laid off last April, hundreds of applications, dozens of interviews, no offers

UCLA degree, current skillset, decades of experience, stellar work record. None of it counts for shit anymore.

That is what my SO is going through right now.


ETA: We live in a place where a significant chuck of the employment market is defense contracting, so the sequester is going to really screw things up even more.

[duffyduff]

22. Oodles of applications over the past five years, dozens of interviews,

and not a single offer for a regular job, whether full time with benefits or part time with none. Not even on offer for Vista employment. This is in all kinds of different jobs.

I am trying to get a regular special education teaching license in Oregon, but it costs money for the tests despite having experience in another state.

[Wounded Bear]

6. Am there...doing that....

60 now. Been working temp jobs. Just got "my contract has been terminated" notice.....again.

Life sucks.

[OneGrassRoot]

7. Yep. I'm there. n/t

[slackmaster]

9. 55 here and still employable

Keep fighting!

[TheMastersNemesis]

10. Unemployable At 50 Is Not New - Corporations Dumping 50 Somethings In '90's

I have been posting here for quite a while and have been saying that careers are over by 45. The age of obsolescence in a corporation is 42. That is the age an employee becomes a liability to the bottom line. Job security and longevity is the first thing that the Reagan Revolution went after. That is why they attacked the unions so aggressively who brought on the idea of longevity and seniority to the work force.

It just amazed me when I was at DOL all the garbage the pubic bought from corporate America. Now the corporate meme is multiple careers. THAT BULLSHIT IS A TOTAL MYTH AND A COMPLETE DEAD END. What is worse is that so many workers are extremely anti union or won't vote for pro union or pro labor candidates.

Based on my personal experience multiple jobs mean lower income as one gets older for 80% or 90"% of the work force. Success stories are not even the tip of the iceberg.

The public has been boldly lied to. Age discrimination is now totally out of control and the GOP has given employers ALL THE POWER TO SAVAGE ANYONE THEY WANT. That is because they have gutted enforcement. With sequestration what is left of enforcement will be the first to be targeted. REMEMBER THE MANTRA ABOUT OVER REGULATION.

Employers are largely off the hook for their abuses because a complicit media will NOT challenge them. Employers now are sacrosanct and cannot be criticized much less regulated.

[zazen]

12. "ooh, but there's a crisis in STEM education & critical thinking skills...

because college grads today will cycle through on average 7-8 different jobs before they retire!"

Neoliberal apologia #14.
(and the big lie through which universities can squeeze money out of federal funding agencies)

And the worst irony of this in university leadership circles is how the real critical thinking, and speaking, which would be to speak truth to the actual corporate oligarchy instead of providing it cover, is silenced and punished.

Foucauldian . . internalize the discourse of supposed subversion and institutionalize and mainstream identity politics so that human subjects persuade themselves that they're actually thinking critically about anything.

[chervilant]

18. OMG!!!

I could not agree more with your post!!

Add to the grim fact that the CMs are heavily invested in the "lower class people are just not very bright" meme, we must also contend with their "we, the intellectual types, must decide the fates of the poor, like the sky god father to us all!"

And, we wonder why anti-intellectualism is so pervasive...

[chervilant]

16. Great post!

I was wrongfully terminated the day before our Christmas break, from a job as a caseworker in Arkansas (in a county I've been told NOT to identify--it starts with "Boo" and ends with "ne"-- by a spiteful, deceitful man I've been warned NOT to name -- that would be Dan Cates).

Obviously, I'm no longer cowed into submission about this incident. However, I'm finally past the shock and anger and can acknowledge that I'm damned lucky not to work with such a vicious, toxic man (although, I remain concerned for the families in crisis who'll have to contend with him).

I am writing a piece about this issue (unemployment among people over 42), from a rather different perspective. I hope you'll read it and tell me what you think.

[TheMastersNemesis]

17. I Am Assuming That You Are Posting Your Article On DU Willl Look For It.

I had read an article or post on the actuarial age of a person being obsolete in employment terms. The 42 age was a bit of a surprise but was logical when you consider the fact that most workers have growing family obligations and hav more health risks or problems by that age. And they usually have accrued some vacation, sick and higher pay other benefits by that time if they have been employed a long time.

A company saves the most money cutting more senior employees.

[chervilant]

19. Yes.

And, I've bookmarked this thread so I can give you a head's up about it.

Time to write a few letters, too, a la Steinem in "Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions."