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Why the Middle-Aged Are Missing Out on New Jobs
Jobs are back. Just not for everybody.
Like many other things in the stutter-step economic recovery, the job market is finally recovering, but progress is uneven and some people are being left out. The latest jobs report, for example, shows that the economy created 216,000 jobs in March, for a total of about 1.9 million new jobs since employment levels bottomed out at the end of 2009. That's a healthy pace of job growth that will help bring down the uncomfortably high unemployment rate, and, with luck, cement the recovery.
But digging into the numbers reveals some of the unusual ways that work and retirement may be permanently changing for millions of Americans. Most of the new jobs created since the end of 2009, for one thing, are going to workers under the age of 34, or over the age of 55. Employment levels for middle-aged workers, meanwhile, are stagnant or still falling. Here's a breakdown:
Age group Job gains last 15 months Unemployment rate
All adults 16 and over 1.9 million 8.8%
16 - 24 490,000 17.6%
25 - 34 709,000 9.1%
35 - 44 -143,000 7.2%
45 - 54 -454,000 7.1%
55 and over 1.3 million 3.1%
(Note: The broken-down job numbers don't completely add up to the total due to seasonal adjustments and other factors.)
Why the Middle-Aged Are Missing Out on New Jobs - Yahoo! Finance
Jobs are back. Just not for everybody.
Like many other things in the stutter-step economic recovery, the job market is finally recovering, but progress is uneven and some people are being left out. The latest jobs report, for example, shows that the economy created 216,000 jobs in March, for a total of about 1.9 million new jobs since employment levels bottomed out at the end of 2009. That's a healthy pace of job growth that will help bring down the uncomfortably high unemployment rate, and, with luck, cement the recovery.
But digging into the numbers reveals some of the unusual ways that work and retirement may be permanently changing for millions of Americans. Most of the new jobs created since the end of 2009, for one thing, are going to workers under the age of 34, or over the age of 55. Employment levels for middle-aged workers, meanwhile, are stagnant or still falling. Here's a breakdown:
Age group Job gains last 15 months Unemployment rate
All adults 16 and over 1.9 million 8.8%
16 - 24 490,000 17.6%
25 - 34 709,000 9.1%
35 - 44 -143,000 7.2%
45 - 54 -454,000 7.1%
55 and over 1.3 million 3.1%
(Note: The broken-down job numbers don't completely add up to the total due to seasonal adjustments and other factors.)
Why the Middle-Aged Are Missing Out on New Jobs - Yahoo! Finance