For the first time on record, senior citizens outnumber teens in the labor force as the Great Recession accentuates trends that make it harder for young people to find jobs and more likely for older workers to delay retirement.
This historic crossover is revealed in data compiled by Bloomberg News showing that 6.6 million people over age 65 worked or looked for work in the first six months of the year, versus 5.9 million 16- to 19-year-olds. That analysis is based on federal records that started in 1948 when there were 4.4 million teens in the labor force compared with 2.9 million people over age 65.
Experts say that over the past decade older workers have tended to hang on to their paychecks longer, owing to sagging stock portfolios and falling home prices. This shift toward an aging workforce has been disastrous for 16- to 19-year-olds, who face unemployment rates of 25 percent nationwide, similar to the Great Depression.
“It’s killing kids,” said Andrew Sum, director of the center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. “We’re tossing our future into the trash bin.”
Economists agree that youngsters, especially those who lack college degrees, need entry-level jobs to help them acquire the discipline, confidence and motivation they need to succeed later in life.
The recession hurts.
“Young people, as is always the case, get slammed hard because they are last hired, first fired,” said Heidi Shierholz with the liberal Economic Policy Institute.
Some economists argue that high rates of teen unemployment make it time to rethink minimum wage laws that put youngsters at a disadvantage to older workers who may compete for the same jobs.
“We need to create a lower minimum wage for teens to lower the cost of hiring and training entry level employees,” said Michael Saltsman, a research fellow at the conservative Employment Policies Institute. “What we would get for this is more jobs for our teens to learn career skills.”
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