Wolf Richter: “This Chart Is A True Representation Of The Employment Crisis In This Country”

Posted on January 9, 2014 by Yves Smith

Yves here. Wolf’s latest post gives a crisp overview of how bad things are in job land. Among other things, he highlights the catastrophically high unemployment levels among young people, and how financially stressed older workers are hanging on to jobs much more than they used to in the past.

But there’s another layer to this picture. Heretofore, the pattern among employers in a downturn in managing the non-executive/senior managerial workforce was to push out higher-cost older workers in favor of cheap, high energy, less set-in-their-ways new hires. People in my age cohort and a bit older will attest that they know lots of people over 40 who were given the heave-ho. Some eventually found work at much lower pay, some became self-employed (it’s a lot harder than the business press lets on; 9 out of every 10 new businesses fail in the first three years), and some retired, living more modestly than they had wanted to.