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.
College educated, with a degree in business administration, she is experienced, having worked for two decades as an internal auditor and analyst at Boeing before losing that job.
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.
Since the economic collapse, there are not enough jobs being created for the population as a whole, much less for those in the twilight of their careers.
Of the 14.9 million unemployed, more than 2.2 million are 55 or older. Nearly half of them have been unemployed six months or longer, according to the Labor Department. The unemployment rate in the group — 7.3 percent — is at a record, more than double what it was at the beginning of the latest recession.
Read the Full Article at NYTimes by MOTOKO RICH.
Like many of the others I am an experienced employee with an undergraduate and graduate degree in Finance, over 30 years of experience in sales, program management, and manufacturing, at an upper and mid management level, and in excellent health and with a high energy level. I have been unemployed for over 2 years, and am willing to relocate. I have submitted well over 2000 resumes to companies across the country in various industries, for positions which I am well qualified for, and have had only a hand-full of interviews and not a single job offer. I have exhausted my 401K, had to sell assets and am on the verge of losing my home. (not mortgaged beyond what I was capable of supporting). I am more than capable of being more than a significant contributor to many employers. I resent our president's continued call for the need to "reeducate our workforce". There is a huge number of highly educated and experienced workers out here who are seeing a reasonably comfortable retirement evaporate day by day. We are not "lounging" around on unemployment, enjoying living on the public dole, we are hard working experienced workers that the economy does not have the jobs to employ.
ReplyDeleteWe have watched our president(s) and congress deal with every issue over the last years except for making sure people have the opportunity to work. They have made banks and companies whole for the losses that their managements created, encouraged them to dump pensions and medical insurance, supported and allowed huge bonuses for the people that created these problems. Our lawmakers have not only not enforced antitrust laws, but relaxed theses laws for the special interests that court them, gutting the laws that should have avoided having companies of any type that are "Too Big to Fail". They have given unfair advantages to foreign companies and countries, in their employment and trade practices -(allowed controlled currency exchanges, [china, and in the past Japan] allowed foreign automakers to import vehicles while using practices designed to avoid import duties. Encouraging foreign automakers and other manufacturers to locate here, giving them government incentives and allowing them to use [non union] labor and less restrictive labor practices, while not allowing our domestic manufacturers to escape contracts and practices [encouraged and forced by the government when negotiated] that were in place long before the foreign companies decided to operate here, effectively giving the foreign corporation an unfair competitive advantage and forcing domestic companies to compete at a disadvantage)
Government has also enforcd discrimination on many fronts while ignoring age discrimination which has been used heavily in determining layoffs in the recent recession. It is time for us to have a government that supports domestic manufacturing and will make a concerted effort to establish incentives and tax policy to put people back to work.