The 40 - 50 year olds might still be able to get a decent job, so they probably won't get that job - but after age 55/60, long term unemployment pretty much is the end of a career, and I've been to quite a few small retail or service business where the majority of the workforce is right about retirement age instead of just out of high school or college, as it usually was prior to the 2000's.
The older workforce is usually one comprised of a person who thinks they have enough retirement "saved" and will hang on at significantly lower wages dipping into savings or emergency funds until it is discovered that the supposedly maxed out while working 401K or retirement investments that was kept untouched during the unemployment period usually doesn't leave them very much for a future retirement without full Social Security added on.
So they keep on working that low wage job to "make up" for the losses that resulted from that long-term unemployment period.
And many continue working even after they could retire because Social Security, the 401K income, and the minimum wage job still doesn't make up for the 3+ years of unemployment and minimum wage work.
It's really very sad seeing someone who looks like they're a 70-year old working the cash register at a florist or parts store.
It's even more sad to hear that once they were a shift lead or project manager - upper level skilled trade or mid-level managers working their way to what they saw as the successful retirement their parents managed to wrangle - who were laid off ten or fifteen years ago and this was the best type of job they could get and keep.
All to support family still living with them, pay for the roof over their heads, medical costs, a working auto, and sufficient food in the pantry.
SIDE COMMENTARY/HIJACKING OF THREAD
And for all those fantastically lucky "bootstrap" types who will say "it's the unemployed own fault" they didn't save enough, network enough, pay attention enough -
In the 1980's and 1990's, the rule of thumb in planning on saving for unexpected events that would cause a lapse in employment was "for every month of unemployment, it takes 4 months of work at the same wage as previous to recover the losses to your savings and ability to pay your bills."
That means it takes 4 months until you stop robbing Peter to pay Paul for every month you weren't making money to pay either Peter or Paul. Even if you had money saved up.
That was the rule of thumb for shipyard workers and other median-waged semi-professional/skilled labor jobs or contract work.
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I personally experienced it several times during that period, after I went from Active Duty Navy to Reserves and lived on the economy.
It took me about a year to return to the level of bill paying/saving that I did while I was active duty - because I suddenly found myself paying rent without BAQ/VHA that had been supplementing my basic pay. Even with money saved in the bank and a job I thought more than sufficient to pay all my bills, that $900 a month tax free made a difference I wasn't really aware of until I lost it. (Mainly the tax free part.)
I know "boo hoo, lil' miss middle class"...can't complain, should just suck it up 'cause there were people worse off. And I did suck it up - I had been PBJ/living out of a car poor before.
But still, there was a budgeting learning curve that ate savings up and began to come to a crisis four months out until I finally got it under control.
And then, there were a couple times where there was a month or 6-week lapse in contract work that ended in a temporary lay-off; it would take four to six months to recover from each of those. Once, I changed employers for less initial pay but more work security; that took almost ten months to recover from the pay loss - even after learning from the previous experiance and planning for that loss in pay two months in advance after I made the initial decision to bail.
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So, sure, there's plenty of people who managed to make it to the upper-six figures and could parley their personal networks to keep them at that level when they face a layoff, but when you're unexpectedly laid off in the middle of even somewhat successful under six-figure career while putting the max aside for retirement, paying a mortgage and sending the kids to college, that can devastate the finances.
Most people aren't making shitloads of money playing being an entrepreneur (of which well over 50% fail...) "leadership" management or boardroom games or gambling with other people's money - And most people don't have a wealthy relative or friend that they get money or access to money from.
Most people only get enough opportunity to live a life where they have a chance to find at least living-wage work (usually for someone else) where they can work hard enough to raise a couple of kids who will be self-sufficient, and hopefully save enough to live in reasonable comfort (when coupled with Social Security and Medicare) when they're too old to work.
That's supposed to be the American Compact - that if you worked hard when you could, you should have the opportunity to live without want when you can't work anymore. That means you should be able to have a safe roof over your head, sufficient food in your pantry, a way to keep your climate comfortable and the lights on, and access to care and methods to keep both mentally and physically healthy. And if you can't work, it shouldn't make a difference.
Anything less is slipping into poverty.
Take away those living-wage jobs when those people are in the middle of their prime earning period of life, and no matter how much they had saved up, or if they had managed to pay off their mortgage early, you are pretty much relegating them to the borders of poverty once they are too old to work.
And that's been happening to pretty much every person who has found themselves unemployed for over a year since the jobs for the working class started leaving and wages started stagnating.
The older you are, the greater the financial stress, and the harder it is to find an equivalent job and recover.
/RANT OFF
And, by the way - what does a purely capitalist society do with over 40 million able-bodied adults who aren't able to find meaningful employment that isn't there and who don't have enough monetary support of their own to pay their way through that society?
(You, there - Congressman Paul Ryan - could you possibly answer that?)
Haele
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