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Young workers face a new challenge: Older workers aren't retiring
- dave4420 2y agoAnd yet we still have a pensions crisis.
- jandrewrogers 2y agoThey can still collect their government pension, they are just working while doing so.
- WalterBright 2y agoThe working career should be 45 years. I never understood why pensions were granted after 20 years. That means one can easily get double pensions.
- gopher_space 2y agoPensions aren’t granted, it’s part of your salary that’s deferred. If you want to defer it longer then you’d need to pay a higher up-front salary.
- WalterBright 2y agoYou are quite correct. The problem, though, is unions and government employees complain about their salaries, but they never account for the value of the very generous pensions. (Government pensions are projected to bankrupt several states.) Hence, it's propaganda.
- consteval 2y agoI wouldn't consider pensions generous, and I also wouldn't blame pensions for bankrupting states. The states are in trouble because they're shit at spending tax dollars. They burn money on shit that doesn't make money. Sprawling roads, suburbs, malls. On a local level these developments don't earn the state more money back via commerce, they actually drain money just to maintain. Next to that, many states went all-in on the industries that were vibrant in their states. Of course they never accounted for the greed of corporations. Those corps left, and behind them death and decay. Entire cities, billions and billions of dollars in infrastructure, left to rot. Now a liability, but moreover, a lost tax revenue source.
- WalterBright 2y agoWhen the pensions are the largest item in the budget, they are the cause of the bankrupting.
- consteval 2y agoI disagree because it's not this simple. Those employees produce VALUE. That money isn't being burnt. You can't do simple math like this when it comes to human beings. IF those employees stick around AND the industries in the state continue then the state earns more money from said industries. How much money do you think Detroit, once the most profitable city in the US, brought in? Now, Detroit has been sucked dry and left to rot and the state is on the hook for those pensions. But did the pensions cause this? In my opinion, no. I think people like to blame the pensions because it's easy and simple, and also because many inherently have a bias towards defending the private sector.
- gopher_space 2y ago> Government pensions are projected to bankrupt several states. Because someone stole the money earmarked for the pensions. That money was supposed to be invested conservatively and at scale to the benefit of both taxpayers and government employees. This isn't a taxpayer or worker problem. This is a problem for whoever made off with that money.
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoThese are not independent issues. The pension crisis is part of why the older workers aren't retiring.
- WalterBright 2y agoIn the machine shop world, the greybeards are retiring and young workers aren't interested in being machinists. It's turning into a crisis. It's a national trend, and I see it specifically in the Seattle area as one can no longer get engines remachined. The shops I used in the past are all gone. Boeing is also having a lot of trouble replacing their greybeard machinists.
- trilbyglens 2y agoSounds like a problem that paying fair wages could solve
- ryandrake 2y agoYea, I do metal working as a hobby and would love to try being a professional machinist, but I'm not willing to do it for 25% of my current comp pushing bits around transistors.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoThe crisis is an inability to find workers unwilling to accept low wages as structural demographic decline continues. Great for workers, terrible for poorly constructed socioeconomic systems.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoPay a decent wage and people will do almost anything. Problem is that while the new narrative is praising blue collar work and encouaraging work in the trades, you are supposedly (love for others to chime in with experience) paid peanuts, maybe even below minimum wage, for a 2-3 years apprenticeship before you can start doing real work. So, you basically go to college with none of the college experience. You're not in debt but you also don't really have loans to live on either. It's just not feasible unless you already have a living situation, and those that can pay for that will simply send the kid to college anyway. It's a mess all around.
- xboxnolifes 2y ago
- WalterBright 2y agoThe government also just revised its employment numbers down by over 800,000. That's going to make it harder to find jobs.
- warkdarrior 2y agoI don't follow how one follows from the other. If the government suddenly states that the employment numbers went up by 800,000, would that make it easier to find jobs? What if all those 800,000 jobs are all as Walmart greeters? Or neurosurgeons?
- huitzitziltzin 2y agoThat’s totally irrelevant. The jobs were not there due to a measurement issue. The measurement is in any event very hard to do.
- WalterBright 2y agoIt means there are 800,000 fewer jobs available.
- JohnFen 2y agoThose 800,000 jobs never existed, so there aren't any fewer. There are just fewer than people thought. The correction to that statistic doesn't affect how easy or hard it is to get a job.
- salawat 2y agoMy yardstick is bad doesn't change the reality of thing don't fit.
- turtle_heck 2y agoMy company sells systems to DMVs, during some small talk one of the folks from the DMV said that they keep having retirees come back after retiring, the main reason: Healthcare. Working at the DMV is obviously a pretty easy job (compared to say... a roofer or even retail) so they just go back to work to save on Health Insurance. The DMV gladly hires them back too, they have the experience, know how things work, show up and do their job, etc. I feel really bad for young people out there trying to get their foot in the door somewhere.
- mingus88 2y agoSimilar anecdote. My father worked in a supermarket before a pivot to real estate. After the 2008 crash he wasn’t able to retire on time and went back to the supermarket to stock shelves during the night shift…at 70 years old The lack of stable health care understandably scares older people. It’s concerning to see so many seniors in jobs that have traditionally been done by high schoolers or folk in their 20s
- bigfatkitten 2y agoI worked in a supermarket in my early 20s doing just that, and most of the folks I worked with were otherwise semi retired and working a few nights a week.
- nine_zeros 2y agoWhere I live, there is such an acute shortage of skilled tradespeople, that prices are through the roof. It seems that the world is reverting to a point where humans are in demand for hands-on jobs as opposed to BS jobs like layers and layers of white-collar management.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago> No one wants to force older workers out of jobs. <ahem> IBM </ahem> They mention startups as a way for younger folks to do OK, and they're right, but not everyone is cut out for eating ramen for two years. Personally, I would have been happy to join a startup. I had my retirement set, and didn't need to make a bunch of money. I am also quite willing to work long hours (I do that now, but for free). I also have multiple decades worth of experience, shipping software and hardware, running teams, and managing budgets. But I guess there's no market in startups for us olds. The couple of startup "interviews" that I had, were really just insult sessions, where the interviewer was working through their daddy issues.
- jajko 2y ago> but not everyone is cut out for eating ramen for two years We all know failure rate in startups is somewhere around 95%, so young folks are mostly being already smart to not listen that much to those few loud ones with survivor's bias. And even those who don't fail, owners often screw early employees out of any meaningful compensation as company grows. Its fine to eat for 2 years ramens, but then if its still probable you will have nothing to show afterwards apart from worse health and wasted life for somebody else's success, that's fail right there. Even corporations are better proposition in such case - 2 years of solid effort under good manager can land you a nice senior job with adequate compensation (or just ask for it elsewhere, thats how to elevate one's salary a few times). As for general topic - if folks want to retire, most of them will, either by assessing well their declining physical and mental health, or simply having other passions. Life can bring so much more beauty to those few remaining years compared to anything coming out of sitting in front of screen, but not everybody had the luxury of discovering this.
- ryandrake 2y agoIn general, the only decently paying job titles in the startup world are "Founder" and "Co-founder". Everyone else is probably better off working for a medium-sized boring tech company, outside of the unicorn startup outliers we've all heard of.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
- ryandrake 2y agoFeel this in my bones even as a non-young worker. I'm almost 50 and am still a lowly individual contributor worker-bee with no direct reports, no budget, no real P&L responsibility... The mass of legacy employees perpetually above me weighs heavily. It feels like people have to literally die before any advancement can happen.
- toomuchtodo 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- theandrewbailey 2y agohttps://archive.ph/OI6x3 https://archive.ph/OI6x3
- johnea 2y agoMy guess would be that most people working in their 70s (or 80s!) would very much like to retire, but can't. I'm 65 and wish I could have retired 10 years ago. After 40 years in industry I'd really rather be doing something else. This seems like a direct consequence of eliminating pensions.
- ryandrake 2y agoI genuinely feel for the people who had to navigate the transition from defined-benefit to defined-contribution. When it happens halfway through your career, you are likely unprepared and haven't saved enough. But for those workers where defined-contribution has been the way their entire lives, they went into it with all eyes open and should have saved sufficiently. Everyone who entered the workforce after, say, 1995 or so, knows that their retirement will be entirely self-funded through savings and investment. It's not a mystery. You don't get to wake up at 75 one day and act surprised that you can't retire yet.
- falcolas 2y agoPeople today are being told they need to save around $4m to retire (70% of income for 18 years). That's about $2k a month for 37 years (ideally with sub 3% inflation and 5-6% returns on your investments throughout). That's a lot of money, even at an above median income. It also doesn't account for having to pay for inflated housing and college loans. As for people looking to retire today, given the market issues which reset more than a few 401k portfolios and the unexpected lack of job wage growth (compared with inflation and/or housing), it's not too surprising. Live longer than expected, or get a bad medical bill, and it's really unsurprising.
- drewcoo 2y agoOlder workers haven't been paid well enough to retire. FTFY, WaPo. The root cause of the problem is not between the generations.