You (We) Are Not Alone

The statistics* from this past year are pretty staggering:

During the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic, workers aged 55 and older were 17 percent more likely to lose their jobs than employees who were just a few years younger…This is the first time in 50 years that older adults are experiencing higher unemployment than mid-career workers.

Which basically reflects an acceleration of a trend that has been building over the last few decades**:

The share of U.S. workers who’ve suffered financially damaging, employer-driven job separations after age 50 has risen steadily from just over 10 percent in 1998 to almost 30 percent in 2016
28 percent of stable, longtime employees sustain at least one damaging layoff by their employers between turning 50 and leaving work for retirement.
Of those laid off, only 1 in 10 ever again earn as much as they did previously
55 percent of those with college or graduate degrees who reach their 50s working steadily in long-term jobs subsequently face a damaging layoff or other involuntary separation.
An additional 13 percent of workers who start their 50s in long-held positions unexpectedly retire under conditions that suggest they were forced out
A further 15 percent of over-50 workers who begin with stable jobs quit or leave them after reporting that their pay, hours, work locations or treatment by supervisors have deteriorated
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are currently 40 million Americans age 50 and older who are working. As many as 22 million of these people have or will suffer a layoff, forced retirement or other involuntary job separation. Of these, only a little over 2 million have recovered or will.
Once out, older workers only rarely regain the income and stability they once enjoyed

So what do all these statistics really mean?

“These findings tell us that a sizable percentage, possibly a majority, of workers who hold career jobs in their 50s will get pushed out of those jobs on their way to retirement,” Gary Burtless, a prominent labor economist with the Brookings Institution in Washington said. “Yes, workers can find jobs after a career job comes to an early, unexpected end. But way too often, the replacement job is a whole lot worse than the career job. This leaves little room for the worker to rebuild.”

When you add in those forced to leave their jobs for personal reasons such as poor health or family trouble, the share of Americans pushed out of regular work late in their careers rises to almost two-thirds. That’s a far cry from the voluntary glide path to retirement that most economists assume, and many Americans expect.

“There’s no safe haven in today’s labor market,” said Carl Van Horn, a public policy professor and director of the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “Even older workers who have held jobs with the same employer for decades may be laid off without warning” or otherwise cut. (In a previously published story, ProPublica described how IBM forced out more than 20,000 U.S. workers aged 40 and over in the past several years in order to, in the words of one internal company planning document, “correct seniority mix.”).

These statistics and trends are critical pieces of knowledge for those of us older career professionals who find ourselves in this stressful position. Our first reaction is to blame ourselves and spend a significant amount of time and energy trying to identify the conversation, meeting, project or comment we would change that would’ve saved our job. Of course, that isn’t a worthwhile exercise, and it won’t change anything. The fact is that in most cases the circumstances that cause our professional separations are beyond our control, and therefore the more important activity is to determine how to move forward – and not to relitigate the past.

It’s also important to realize that the workplace of today – at this particular stage in our professional life – is not the same environment that we thrived in earlier in our careers. It’s more competitive, less forgiving, and more focused on profitability than ever before. In corporate america there’s never been a stronger focus on short-term, quarterly results over all else. Executive compensation is driven by stock performance, and therefore how to “do more with less” is a mantra that’s been adopted across all sectors. This does not bode well for the most experienced – and correspondingly the highest paid – segment of the workforce – us (aka “the old white/black/brown guys” in most cases).

So….. what to do……..?

I’ve chosen my new path. If it fails it’s all on me – no corporation, boss, or stock price to blame it on – which is exactly how I want it. I’ll be making the decisions and managing the people and overall business – again which is exactly how I want it. I’m excited to share my journey with you starting with my next blog post.

#reinventU

Steve

*AARP.org article October 2020

**ProPublica and the Urban Institute, a Washington think tank, analyzed data from the Health and Retirement Study, or HRS, the premier source of quantitative information about aging in America. Since 1992, the study has followed a nationally representative sample of about 20,000 people from the time they turn 50 through the rest of their lives. Article link here. The HRS is widely considered the gold standard for information about the economic lives and health of older Americans. It’s funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Social Security Administration and is administered by the University of Michigan. It has been cited in thousands of academic papers and has served as the basis for a generation of business and government policymaking.