57 percent of retirees look for new jobs

Retirement has a different meaning for 60 percent of workers older than 60.

It means looking for a new job after the initial retirement, according to a survey by CareerBuilder. Last year, 57 percent planned on finding a new job after retirement.

The good news is that 48 percent of employers plan on hiring workers older than 50 this year, which is a 4 percent rise from the 44 percent who did so in 2012. An even larger amount, 76 percent, would consider an applicant in that age range as well.

Brent Rasmussen, President of CareerBuilder North America, suggested ways mature workers can maximize a job search.

“We’re seeing more than three quarters of mature workers putting off retirement, largely due to financial concerns, but also as a personal decision made by people who enjoy their work,” Rasmussen said. “The majority of workers who have talked with their bosses about staying on past retirement found their companies to be open to retaining them. If you’re approaching retirement age but hope to continue working, an open line of communication is very important.”

Those in this age range seeking a job or planning on staying with their original job longer should also stay current by attending seminars and workshops, find new ways to benefit the company, reach out to former colleagues to network and consider part-time or freelance work, according to the survey. Deseret News

More americans working past retirement age

The top financial worry of Americans is that they won't have enough money when they retire, according to a recent Gallup poll. And the average age at which Americans expect to retire keeps rising — from age 60 in the mid-1990s to age 67 now, the survey showed.

Working past retirement age isn't an expectation. But for a growing number of older people, it's their reality. In fact, Bureau of Labor Statistics figures show that almost a third of Americans between the ages of 65 and 70 are still working. Even among people who are 75 and older, 7 percent are still on the job.

Sometimes these people are working because they need the money. Increasingly, however, people are staying in the workforce into their later years because they're living longer and staying healthy longer.

We meet some of the older Americans who are still on the job in the series Working Late. Among our stories, we profile a 73-year-old fitness instructor for seniors in New York City; a 69-year-old part-time barber shop owner in Illinois; a 78-year-old real estate firm owner from Massachusetts who says she'll never retire; and a lawmaker from Wisconsin who, at 85, is the longest-serving state legislator in the country. NPR

 Related: When A Bad Economy Means Working 'Forever'

How to get the long-term unemployed back to work

Although things seem to be looking up on the jobs front (claims for state unemployment benefits just fell to their lowest level since January 2008), the same can't be said for America's long-term unemployed, especially those over 50.

Consider:

• Nearly 40 percent of unemployed Americans — roughly 4.8 million people — have been jobless for six months or longer. About half of them are over age 50.
• Some 3.25 million Americans, CNN says, are “hopelessly unemployed.” They haven’t looked for work in more than a year because they’ve simply given up the search. They’re not even counted for the official unemployment rate.
• Roughly 1.5 million of the unemployed are “99ers,” out of work for 99 weeks or longer.
• The average time someone stays unemployed is now about 10 months, twice as long as six years ago, according to NPR.

The first is the national rollout of the successful Platform to Employment program created by Joe Carbone at The WorkPlace in western Connecticut.

Platform to Employment gives jobless people five weeks of training to restore their confidence, freshen their interviewing and tech skills and reduce their stress. Then the program places them as interns for eight weeks at a local employer.

At the end of the internships, the employers decide whether to offer the interns paid positions.

Most of them do.

Platform to Employment is about to start replicating the program in 10 cities, specifically for unemployed residents over 50 and military veterans. AARP Foundation and Citi Community Development are partners for the “over 50” offerings; the Walmart Foundation is the force behind veterans’ assistance. Together, the three groups have committed more than $1.5 million to the effort.


Carbone concedes that all the Platform to Employment participants who’ve been hired earn less than they did before they lost their jobs. “Yet they’re all very happy because they’re working,” he says. Susan Sipprelle, creator of the Over 50 and Out of Work multimedia project and writer/producer of the award-winning unemployment documentary, Set for Life, echoes Carbone.

“Most of the 100 unemployed Americans over 50 we initially interviewed have been able to find jobs over the past year or so," she says, "but they’re part-time or for much less money than they earned prior to the Great Recession.”

JobRaising Challenge is a new crowd-funding competition from the Skoll Foundation, CrowdRise,The Huffington Post and McKinsey & Company. The Skoll Foundation will award a total of $250,000 to nonprofits who demonstrate “the most promising, scalable employment solutions.”

Here’s how it works: Between now and March 1, members of the public go to the JobRaising Challenge’s website, Jobraising.com, and donate money (from $10 to $10,000 per donor) to any of the 74 competing nonprofits they think would be best at fighting the jobs crisis. The groups raising the most money will win the prize money. Next Avenue

States Lead Out on Fiscal, Economic Change

Democrat Gina Raimondo is not the fiscal firebrand that public employee unions are used to battling, but the Democratic treasurer of left-leaning Rhode Island is taking a hard line on pension reform. And so far, she is winning.

The pension reform passed in 2011 freezes cost of living adjustments, raises the retirement age, and pushes public employees into a hybrid of a traditional pension and a 401k.

While Washington is hamstrung between Republicans opposing tax increases and Democrats opposing changes to costly entitlements, many state governments are moving forward on their own. These include red states, Republican-dominated blue states like Michigan, blue states with coalition governments like Washington, and even blue-blue states like Rhode Island.

Michigan's passage of right-to-work legislation for both public and private sectors seems to reflect activity in two neighboring states— one red (Indiana) and the other blue (Wisconsin).

Indiana recently passed right-to-work legislation, and early indications of resulting job growth are said to have emboldened Republicans up north in Michigan. Of course, the recent battles over public sector unions in Wisconsin, with the Republicans prevailing repeatedly in with a pro-Obama electorate certainly emoldened their counterparts in Michigan.

In both Washington and New York, Republicans engineered a surprise coalition control of the state senate, after two centrist Democrats broke ranks to share power with them in that body.

In his review of these developments, Barone argued that states are forced to face realities the Federal government manages to avoid, which can lead to nonideological and coalition behavior. "The fiscal squeeze is felt more urgently in the states," Barone wrote, "They can't print money and can't count on Ben Bernanke's Federal Reserve to buy 70 percent of their bonds." Deseret News

Finding a solution to fear of outliving retirement savings

According to a recent study, “Reclaiming the Future” from Allianz Life Insurance of North America, this is a very common refrain regarding the sentiment of pre-retirees. In 2011, the Allianz study found 35 percent of baby boomers “feel totally unprepared financially for retirement,” and 50 percent were extremely concerned about outliving income from retirement assets.

There are at least four main risks each of us will face in retirement. First, we will all spend more money in retirement than we expect to — plan to spend at least as much as you do now.

In 1983, 62 percent of company retirement plans were pension plans (defined benefit plans) guaranteeing a lifetime income to the employee. Today that number is 13 percent and dropping. Employers have deftly shifted the responsibility for income in retirement to the employee by offering 401(k) plans (defined contribution plans) where the employer’s only responsibility is to contribute to the plan if they choose to.

The employees are left on their own to figure out how to make the income last during retirement.

What has become apparent today is the amount of income you can guarantee yourself in retirement is much more important than what your retirement assets grow to before retirement. Those serious about guaranteed retirement income need to take a hard look at FIAs. Income payments from an FIA are dependent on the claims paying ability of the insurance company that offers them. Given the historical financial stability of large insurers and the financial coverage they maintain for paying claims, there is a high likelihood they will insure a consistent and stable retirement. Read more: Deseret News

It's Time to See Older Workers as an Asset

The footprints of an aging America are everywhere. Every day it seems another blue chip report is issued worrying about the surging ranks of the elderly. All boomers will be 65 and older by 2030. (The Rolling Stones’ memorable line “What a drag it is getting old” hurts, doesn’t it?) Put somewhat differently, 19.3 percent of the population will be at least 65 in 2030, up from 13 percent in 2010, according to U.S. Census Bureau projections. The litany of fears that goes along with an aging population ranges from a rising tide of entitlement spending starving the public purse of money for productive investments, to Corporate America’s innovative energies being depleted along with graying hair and aching joints of an older workforce.

Demographics, however, aren’t destiny. Instead, an aging America is an underappreciated and unexploited economic resource in a highly competitive global economy. Take Europe vs. the U.S. In many parts of Europe there isn’t the kind of part-time, flexible work that’s available in the U.S., where federal laws have outlawed employment discrimination against age since the 1960s. Most European countries have only recently instituted such legislation. And Europe is still struggling to convince workers to stay on the job longer. The U.S. labor force participation rate of older male workers began climbing by the end of the 20th century. Older women are remaining employed longer, too. “Yes, America has an aging population,” says Nicole Maestas, economist at the Rand Corp., the Santa Monica (Calif.)-based think tank. “The upside of that is a whole generation of people who are interested in anything but retirement.”
Productivity matters more than demographics. For example, a half-century ago there were about five workers for every retiree, a figure that has shrunk to less than 3 to 1. Yet over the same time period, American living standards have risen smartly, thanks largely to productivity growth. If productivity continues to run at its current nearly 2.5 percent annual rate, the average worker will produce more than twice as much in an hour of work 30 years from now compared with today, points out Dean Baker, codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.

Taken altogether, an aging workforce is a competitive advantage. Instead of bemoaning America’s older population, policymakers and corporate chieftains should concentrate on keeping them productively on the job longer. In international comparisons, the U.S. has long garnered admiration for its productive workforce, innovative companies, superb universities, and dynamic labor market. It’s time to add older workers to that list. Read more: Bloomberg Businessweek

Juggling work, kids, debt and college, older Utah women earn degrees

While women are a 55 percent majority of undergraduates nationally, in Utah they are closer to a 45 percent minority. The gender gap in higher education has caught the attention of administrators and policymakers who want to learn why and how to get more women through college. Finding solutions is critical if the state hopes to reach its goal of increasing the share of the working population with a post-secondary credential to 66 percent, officials say.

The Legislature earmarked $100,000 to implement recommendations recently released by the Utah Women’s College Task Force, which Gov. Gary Herbert convened last year.

A few years ago, Amy Jensen had more employment and educational experience than most Utah women her age. She had worked for years in victim advocacy and law enforcement, while raising a daughter on her own, but opportunities for advancement and better pay had dried up because she didn’t have a college degree.

In today’s recessionary times, older women are returning to Utah campuses in ever larger numbers. And many, such as Weber State University’s Amy Kunzler, have small children but no husband. Kunzler resumed college after her divorce so she would be able to support her three kids, ages 7, 9 and 10.

Early marriage is a commonly cited reason for Utah women dropping out of college in high numbers. Utahns, on average, marry young, and when babies arrive, the woman is often the one to abandon school to manage the domestic front and support the family.

But this sheds little light on why fewer Utah women than men enter universities out of high school. Madsen is stumped on that question, but a recent survey suggests many Utahns don’t believe a college education is as important for women. Salt Lake Tribune

Absent without pay: The declining American workforce

Labor force statistics have lately become a flashpoint of controversy. Some argue that work participation rates hide the real unemployment rate, as discouraged workers slip off the unemployment charts. Lost workers, they argue, will reappear as things improve, causing employment numbers to tank again.

Others point to the falling labor force participation rate as proof that the economy is fundamentally unsound, especially given the sharp decline of men in the workforce. A few conspiracy thinkers even suspect the Labor Department is cooking numbers to fudge unemployment for the White House.

The truth, far more complex and interesting, leads to the underbelly of key economic and social upheaval, including landmark changes like the collapse of the manufacturing sector, a steady rise in disability claims, the shifting activities of women and the sudden aging of the baby boom generation. Deseret News

Age discrimination in a difficult economy

A growing number of older workers apparently share the perception of ongoing age bias, according to statistics from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 2011, the commission received 23,465 “receipts” or formal filings alleging age discrimination – 35 percent more than in 2001. In Utah, age-discrimination receipts totaled 181 in 2011, a 10 percent increase over the past decade.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of workers age 55-64 is projected to rise 40 percent from 2006-2016, nearly double that for those over 65. By 2016, workers age 65 and over are expected to account for 6.1 percent of the total workforce, compared with 3.6 percent a decade earlier.

Age discrimination is one aspect of employment discrimination that is prohibited under the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act that was initially enacted in 1967. According to the Utah Anti-Discrimination and Labor Division (UALD), discrimination occurs when someone is treated differently – or when an employer takes action against an employee – because of that individual’s race, color, sex, pregnancy, disability national origin, age (over 40) or religion.

Monica Austen, a case manager for the Division, gave some insight into how the UALD judged discrimination claims. “Unless there are statements that directly indicate a decision was made because of a discriminatory reason, the Division generally will look at how other employees are treated and if this particular employee was singled out and treated differently," she said. "Remember, the party alleging discrimination has to provide specific information and/or examples of how he or she thinks their treatment has been different than that of other employees in a similar situation." Deseret News