Jobless After 50? You May Be Out of Luck

[Elmore Furth]

It's cold out there.

NPR
October 9, 2010

The economy officially crept out of recession in June of 2009, but for many Americans, the economic markers that really count are the ones that come out each month from the Department of Labor: unemployment statistics.

And the numbers released this week continue to look grim, with almost 15 million Americans out of work and few private sector jobs available.

The typical unemployed worker spends about eight months out of a job, but for people over 50, finding a new job can take a lot longer — if it happens at all.

Cyndi Norton has managed to find work. She makes $10 an hour in a California factory. She has no benefits and says she's basically homeless, relying on friends for a place to sleep. But not too long ago, she was a high-powered administrative assistant at the Rand Corp., sitting in on board meetings and once, memorably, showing Henry Kissinger around the building.

Jobless After 50? You May Be Out of Luck

NYT
By MOTOKO RICH
Published: September 19, 2010

VASHON ISLAND, Wash. — Patricia Reid is not in her 70s, an age when many Americans continue to work. She is not even in her 60s. She is just 57.

Liz Howland, standing at left, leads a “mature workers” seminar for people like Deborah Luger, 56, seated at left, who want to be more attractive to employers.

But four years after losing her job she cannot, in her darkest moments, escape a nagging thought: she may never work again.

College educated, with a degree in business administration...But that does not seem to matter, not for her and not for a growing number of people in their 50s and 60s who desperately want or need to work to pay for retirement and who are starting to worry that they may be discarded from the work force — forever.

For the Unemployed Over 50, Fears of Never Working Again

[glinda]

1. I am there.

[intheflow]

2. I'm sorry, Glinda.

:hug:

Fear of this is what keeps my sister (age 56) in a thankless job, working long hours for low wages. :(

[glinda]

4. Husband takes care of me financially as best he can and I do small arty jobs from home occasionally.

There is nothing out there for me. I just hide in my home paralyzed with fear basically. Always waiting for the next shoe to drop. We do the best we can.

[jtuck004]

6. We are in the same boat.

I don't think people realize what this is doing to our friends and neighbors. It hurts, phsyically and mentally. You can do ALL the right things, but people around us have corrupted the system our parents and grandparents gave their lives to make safe for us.

But this is America, and despite all the problems, perhaps this is the one system where, when enough people get educated and riled up we can push through a fix, eh?

[eridani]

3. Which is why the very idea of the Catfood Commission----

---needs to be put up against a wall and shot.

[jtuck004]

7. ++++

[jtuck004]

5. Screw this. What's the plan President Obama?

I hear people say the government doesn't create jobs. That's just bullshit. Of course it does. Who invested in and brought us ARPANET? For those of you too young to remember, it's now called the Internet. Who brought us the New Deal, and the hiring of WWII, after which we enjoyed about 30 or so years of prosperity?

Now we are investing our money and blood to make sure we can stay in Afghanistan and fight people who are mostly mad at us for - wait for it - BEING IN AFGHANISTAN?

There are over 30 million people, our neighbors, either unemployed, underemployed, or so disheartened they have stopped looking for work. How long can you send resumes out and knock doors with no success, coming home each evening, (if you still have a home) to face your partner or kids? There is a war at home being waged on our friends and neighbors, and our opponents are homelessness and hunger. The casualties are the loss of what the work and dreams of millions of people could provide for the safety and security of our country.

Have you done the math? Bill Clinton created more jobs during his administration than ANY modern president with an average of about 240,000 a month. Today, however, we are reading the latest report that says 64,000. Even though there is nothing on the horizon that says anything like that is remotely possible, let's say we start creating 240,000 a month starting this month. After we take out the 125,000 or so a month it takes us to break even, that only leaves 115,000 net new jobs. At that rate it will take 11 years just to employ the unemployed, not to mention those who need more work just to pay their bills. And unless we get those 240,000 net new private sector jobs, these good people, our friends and neighbors, and some of us, will be waiting 20 years, 30, more?

Yes, I know you invested $800 billion, and it did some good. But there was enough money to send $15 trillion to the guys Geithner ate lunch with so often on Wall Street that someone wrote a story about it. There was enough motivation to funnel over a hundred billion NEW dollars into the greedy hands of health insurance companies who profit by denying care.

Now all of a sudden there is not enough to insure the security of our own citizens by providing enough work? Work that will result in new business which, after all is said and done, provides more jobs than either big business or small business put together? Work that would result in paying taxes which would have employed the teachers that were laid off last month. Yes, I know you sent a few billion more to the Small Business Administration. I also noted that a requirement to hire people was not a condition of the loans, which are highly sought because the interest rate is lower than at commercial banks. But without demand, how many jobs will result? This does nothing to increase demand, except by the most circuitous route imaginable.

Listen to the radio interview above, and to the pain in that good woman's voice. She wants to work, she has skills, and she hurts so bad over this that she is in tears in the interview. There are millions of people just like Cyndi Norton out there, many of whom may have, at 50, worked the last job they will ever work in their life.

What the hell do you expect them to do for the next 17 years while they wait on the paltry scraps of social security?

And the 50 years olds are followed closely in their track by the young men and women graduating from college today, whose first job offer may be in 10 years, when they have to compete with new, fresh college graduates.

And when jobs do appear, they are not $25, or $35/hr jobs. The fastest growing jobs are $7 and $9/hr jobs as home health aides and retail workers. Retail store worker. How in the hell does anyone expect to run an economy in a global theater on that?

Look at the new GM plant. New workers at $14/hr. Not allowed to vote on it. Not told until the union had agreed. Bound to this until 2015. 1300 people. What kind of economy can we have with a paltry few mfg jobs that pay not even enough to raise a kid?

Anyone who thinks their job is safe needs to look a couple years out. That might just raise the hairs on the back of their neck.

We need a plan.

(Interesting timing on your post Elmore. I caught part of this on the way home the other day, and listened to it in it's entirety twice tonight before I read your post. Thank you.)

[readmoreoften]

8. The plan is to give public education to charters so teachers can make min. wage.

Haven't you heard the news? There's no fucking plan. The plan is to be better than the Tea Party, and apparently fund them in NJ.

[ixion]

9. Oh, there's a plan... don't think this is in ANY way unorchestrated

the plan is a Neo-Feudal Age, and things are proceeding according to that plan.

[emulatorloo]

11. Olbermann covered the number of Job Bills that the Republicans have killed in the last two years

on last Thursday night. Jobs bills, incentives for small businesses to hire, anti-outsourcing legislation. All killed by Senate Republicans. Pretty interesting if you get a chance.

[jtuck004]

12. Saw it. Doesn't keep Obama from using his time

at a press conference to say "Here's how many of your neighbors are hungry or homeless in the "Greatest Nation In The World". Here is a plan to provide some of them work, and here is some education in how we are going to thrive in a globalized world".

"Now we know there are some who don't want the plan to work, we hear them calling for failure. The rest of us want to
make the United States the country that leads the world into the 22nd century. Who's with me?..."

I'm tired of the excuses. We know darn good and well that if he would put a plan together and stand up to sell it, he could.

[emulatorloo]

15. Yes, they have the plans they need to sell them.

Of course that means they have to cut through the Republican Based Cable News media.

[jtuck004]

16. Does anyone really think that if the dems actually stood up with

a plan to spend a couple trillion and employ 10 million people that it would be sidelined for
the "Witching Hour" by Christine O'Donnell"?

The only reason dems have trouble getting in front is 'cause they don't have much of anything different to say.

If they made it newsworthy, it would be the lead for a long time...

[Indenturedebtor]

10. The least employed "group" is the recent highschool/college grads

Best luck to them... sorry. Best luck to us all but I feel worst for those younger than myself. Poor buggers have never even had a chance to make a living or save enough for a rainy day.

[jtuck004]

13. That's true, but they have more resources to draw on.

Most of the older ones have homes, cars, kids, grandkids, all sorts of obligations they have taken on over the years, and in their support network their parents are more likely to be dead or unable to contribute. Younger ones are far more mobile and less encumbered, as a general rule. Not always, sure, but more often than not. The older ones may need more medical care, and no job can simply end any access they may have had to anything short of an emergency room. And for many any retirement they may have had is being spent down, leaving them at the mercy of whatever social security might be in 15 years, if they don't die first.

And I haven't yet seen a story about a company saying they will not hire people under 40, regardless of their qualifications. But I have talked with and read about a few who see this crisis as a way to replace older workers with younger ones that will work more cheaply.

But regardless of the demographics, this whole war on the employee is disastrous for our country.

[Paper Roses]

14. Phooey, try finding something when you are 68, laid off and

have a physical problem that eliminates certain jobs like 'all day on your feet'. I have gave up.
I eat less, pay my bills as best I can and do nothing outside of everyday existing.
Lonesome, boring!

[ipaint]

17. Not everyone who is 50 years and older made it into the middle class

For those of us who have lived paycheck to paycheck for 3+ decades, getting pushed back further in every of the half dozen recessions, this depression according to class is basically a death sentence.

Mission accomplished by both parties, the repubs for creating the mess, the dems for enabling it and both for abandoning the long term unemployed, working poor and poor when the shit hit the fan.