No Jobs? Employment Is At 40-Year High For Those 55 And Up

IBD ^ | 05/04/2012 | By JED GRAHAM, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

[SeekAndFind]

As the jobs crisis wears on, with payrolls still 5 million below their pre-recession peak, the share of age 55-and-older Americans working has recovered to near a 42-year high.

Workers under 55 have borne the brunt of the jobs recession, which may mean that its economic effects — due to long-term unemployment, underemployment and stretched household balance sheets — may linger.

Before the financial crisis, economists worried that labor shortages would develop in some occupations as baby boomers left the workforce.

But that's moved to the back burner since the recession began in December 2007. Job holders 55 and up have risen by 3.9 million — and fallen by 8.1 million among those under 55, Labor Department data show. It's been 50 months and counting since payrolls peaked, a post-war record. Labor releases the April jobs report on Friday morning.

Some of this shift reflects demographics. Thanks to aging baby boomers, the 55-and-older population has grown by just shy of 10 million since the end of 2007. Meanwhile, those age 35-44 have fallen by 2.5 million.

But that only explains part of the puzzle. Older workers are hanging on to jobs longer, in part because of lost housing wealth and smaller 401(k) balances than they had counted on.

Among those 55-and-up, the employment-to-population ratio barely dipped even in the depth of recession and is now higher than at the end of 2007. The ratio among those 25-54 remains about 4 percentage points lower than before the recession started.

For the 65-69 and 70-74 groups, the employed shares are up 1.1 percentage points and 1.6 percentage points, respectively, over the past four years.

[equaviator]

Carolina and Georgia, eh? The South shall not rise again. Instead, it will sit in a bubble bath surrounded by candles and Potpouri.

[Marie Antoinette]

Ping!