Reuters Money

Jobless rate for older workers is lower, not better

Rick Lopatin has been looking for work for three years. The 56-year-old is the former chief financial officer of a middle-market pharmaceutical company in the Chicago area; ever since a merger and his subsequent job loss in 2008, he’s been job-hunting and networking intensively, and he’s landed  several interim CFO engagements – including one at a medical devices company on Long Island.

That company offered to make the job permanent, but Lopatin turned it down. He figured the position might have lasted just a few years, and it would have required relocating from the Chicago suburbs, where Lopatin’s wife has a secure managerial position at one of Chicago’s largest hospital systems — a job she’s held for 15 years. “We just couldn’t afford to put that income at risk,” Lopatin explains.

Lopatin’s experience helps illustrate the sharp contrasts in national unemployment data between older and younger workers. The unemployment rate for workers over age 55 is much lower than for the workforce as a whole – it stood at 6.7 percent in September, compared with the 9.1 percent national rate. But at the same time, workers over age 55 who do lose their jobs tend to be jobless far longer – 54.8 weeks, compared with 38.6 weeks for younger workers as of last week.

Reduced mobility helps explain the longer job search time, says Sara E. Rix, an expert on workforce and employment issues at the AARP Public Policy Institute. “Older workers may be ready and willing to move, but they’re not able to do it due to a spouse with a well-established career,” she says. Age discrimination plays a role, too – and Rix thinks some older workers  struggle to acclimate to job hunting when they’ve out of the market for a long time. “At least initially after a job loss, there’s evidence that workers who do get offers tend to hold out for something better. As the jobless period gets longer, they’re willing to accept less than at the beginning.”

What’s more, the lower 55+ jobless rate doesn’t really mean older workers are having an easier time finding new jobs, Rix says. Rather, she thinks it reflects a trend among employers to hang on longer to more experienced workers. The lower jobless rate also reflects a greater tendency of older workers to become discouraged about finding new jobs, and drop out of the labor force entirely. The Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t count workers who have stopped looking for jobs in its unemployment calculations, and that brings down the overall 55+ jobless rate.

But don’t mistake discouragement for lack of interest in a job. Rix notes that there’s been a steady rise in labor force participation by older workers – in fact, the number of employed workers over age 55 is up 11 percent since December 2007.

Gen Y out of work: What is corporate America doing about it?

Highly educated, sometimes entitled and incredibly humbled by the current labor market, Generation Y is hungry for work. But do employers understand this enormous and grossly underemployed demographic?

Nearly eighty million strong, Gen Y is loosely defined as those born between 1980 and 1994 (or 2005 depending on who you talk to). Raised in a kid-centric time, many continue to be coddled by helicopter parents not willing to wean their precious lot from the proverbial financial teat. As a result, Gen Y’s expectations of the workforce are vastly different from baby boomers and even the closely-related Generation X.

“When they get to the workplace, they have a sense of entitlement, a need for validation, difficulty in really discerning what to do because their whole lives were managed,” says Christine Hassler, a Gen Y career expert and consultant to American Express on Millennials. “They have challenges with making decisions and have expectations of work-life balance. They want their opinion to matter and [want to work] for a company that is really making a difference.”

Major employers are struggling to understand this often fickle demographic, choosing instead to focus on candidates familiar with the corporate structure. And in this fragile economy, a new employee who can hit the ground running is an asset. ”I’m seeing a lot of corporations saying they know they need to engage Gen Y and hire young employers because it costs less, but they don’t want to take the risk of hiring someone without work experience,” says Hassler.

Corporate America is also waiting for this demographic to conform to the old playbook, something completely foreign to Generation Y, says Garrison Wynn, CEO of career management website Wynn Solutions and author of “The Real Truth About Success.” They were told they could have everything they wanted and could be whatever they wanted to be. ”They’ve come to collect on that,” Wynn says. “That’s what they expect. So, when they get in a job interview and it looks like the path isn’t going to be good enough or fast enough, then they’re not interested.”

Volatility in global markets, weak domestic growth and persistent economic concerns in Europe are also complicating an organization’s willingness to expand, despite high corporate profits. “The pain of downsizing and the destruction of the organization is so difficult that companies are playing it safe,” says Jackie Greaner, North America practice leader, talent management and organization alignment for Towers Watson. “It’s hard in this type of market, where it goes up and down to such a degree; it leaves everyone feeling less than confident about the state of the economy.”

Don’t skip the nanny background check

Hiring well is a challenge no matter what the business, but when choosing a nanny or full-time babysitter, the stakes are higher than any other position that you might fill. After all, this person will take care of your child when you’re not directly supervising.

You can find a caregiver in a variety of ways — some of which are more fraught with risk than others, and some of which can take an enormous amount of time and effort.

Amanda Abbott of Austin, Texas, a former TV news crime reporter and now a vice president at anthonyBarnum Public Relations, went about finding a nanny for her 3-month-old daughter the intuitive way – placing ads on local job boards and parenting sites like Craigslist and Yahoo jobs – the way that many parents do. Turns out that this was both one of the riskier ways to hire a nanny as well as one of the most time-consuming, according to Marisa Reddy Randazzo, managing partner of SIGMAThreat Management Associates.

Randazzo, a former Secret Service psychologist, said this isn’t a model that most people should follow — particularly the affluent. The problem? Relying on an old-fashioned gut feeling as the primary decision-making criteria.

Abbott thought her experience as a reporter would prepare her for the task, and that her methodology was sound. She pared down 250 emails to 50 based on resumes and email communications. “I then held nearly 40 phone calls, then about 25 in-person interviews,” she said. “I’m also a big believer that it is a gut thing. She wasn’t my first choice from her email but the first time I met her I just knew she had all the nurturing skills and characteristics I was looking for in a caretaker for my daughter.”

Even though Abbott was satisfied with the result, the vital step she was missing, said Randazzo, was a background check, including checking whether the person had any arrests or red flags on their driving record. She recommends going through an established nanny agency, since they are likely to attract the best candidates and will have already done a lot of the screening. This can cost anything from a percentage of the first year’s salary of the nanny you hire to a fixed rate of a few thousand dollars.

“I want to know if the person I’m hiring has trouble obeying the speed limit on a regular basis,” she said.

Advice I would give my 25-year-old self

Dan Greenshields, CFA, is President of ING DIRECT Investing, a subsidiary of ING Bank, fsb. The opinions expressed are his own.

There’s nothing quite like being 25. By that age, for most, school and exams are permanently in the rearview mirror, work is novel and a steady paycheck not only brings financial independence from Mom and Dad, but also is yours to spend as you like.

Not that it’s all easy. This year’s college graduates are entering the professional world with an average of $22,900 in student loans. If they’ve racked up credit card debt and need a car loan, the final figure can easily overwhelm even a generous first salary.

Though there are some aspects of my 25-year-old life that make me nostalgic, for the most part, I’m just grateful for what I’ve learned between then and now. Obviously, I can’t go back in time and course-correct my own missteps.  But I can share with today’s 20-somethings the pieces of advice I wish I had received when I was their age.

Build relationships Let’s start with people. Even if you’re not a person whose goal is to network your way to the top, making the right impression is always in your best interest.

No two relationships are the same. It sounds basic, and it is, but you’d be surprised how often people forget it. Patience, self-awareness and decisiveness are the keys to making and maintaining long-lasting relationships.

On the personal side, finding the right partner is not just emotionally enjoyable, it brings practical advantages, too. There are tax benefits, insurance benefits and, for two-income homes, cash flow benefits. The old adage that two can live as cheaply as one may not be 100 percent true, but partnership definitely brings down the average cost.

50+ job seeker? Tweet your way to a new career

Most older job hunters are comfortable with basic business technology— computers, the Web, email and smart phones. But we still have some Luddites out there – you know who you are – trying to squeak by, hoping to finish their working years without getting fluent in technology.

That’s especially true of social media tools like LinkedIn and Twitter, which can play a big role in helping job hunters find new work in a hard-times economy.

“The first time I looked at Twitter, I thought ‘what is this thing?’,” says Lee Silverstein, who is transitioning to a new career at age 50, following 29 years in management jobs with major department stores — most recently Macy’s, where he focused on training and leadership development.

Silverstein didn’t think of himself as a writer with something to say online, but he jumped in anyway with a blog and Twitter account.

“When I started the blog, I saw that I did have something to say, and I started sharing my thoughts,” he says. In a short time, Silverstein has built an audience of 600 followers for his tweets and blog posts on leadership development and mentoring. “It’s about making yourself findable,” he says. “Just sitting and going through the job boards won’t get you where you want to be. You’ve got to give people a reason to discover you.”

In a tough job market, it’s hard to overstate the importance of networking, differentiating yourself and highlighting the value you can bring to an employer. Social media platforms offer some important means to those ends through sharing expertise and making new connections. But older job hunters can be at a competitive disadvantage.

“I dont think it’s a factor of age alone – it’s a comfort level using the tools,” says Miriam Salpeter, a job search and social media coach, and author of Social Networking for Career Success: Using Online Tools to Create a Personal Brand. “People who don’t enjoy social media don’t want to feel they will be sucked in, and tied down by it all the time. And with Twitter, some just don’t think they can communicate a full thought in 140 characters. I find that it helps to have targets and goals to use these things well.”

Why older workers are creating their own jobs

Deborah Ramsey went to work straight out of high school in the 1970s, working her way through the now-familiar rounds of layoffs, promotions and job changes at a series of banking, insurance and consulting companies in Philadelphia, her hometown. “I did my bit,” she recalls.

In 2005, she was working as an administrator for a technology consulting firm that was undergoing restructuring. “A lot of people were being laid off or leaving. I had been through two big layoffs before, I knew what they smelled like.” Ramsey decided to leave voluntarily, spurred by the changing work environment and caregiving responsibilities at home, where she looks after a mentally disabled daughter, an aging mother and mother-in-law, and her husband, a disabled veteran.

At age 52, she was ready for a change. Over the years, she had developed a strong interest in herbal remedies and massage therapy to help her daughter, who also suffers from asthma.

“I figured I had 20 good years left of life. I knew I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing, and I needed to do something for myself. And I had been getting massages myself and really enjoyed it. It seemed to me women my age needed to start relaxing and enjoying life more, so I started Googling massage schools and wound up going back to school to get trained as a professional massage therapist.”

While she trained, Ramsey remodeled her basement and installed a massage table; and her first “clients” were friends who agreed to let Ramsey practice her new skills on them. Her practice flourished, and she moved out of the basement in 2009 to open her own inner city storefront natural wellness and spa, with help of the Women’s Opportunity Resource Center, a nonprofit that helped Ramsey with training and a $35,000 loan.

Ramsey’s transition underscores an important trend among workers over age 50 who find themselves bounced out of the workforce. Many are choosing to become self-employed entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs age 55 to 64 represent a rising share of start-up activity, according to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, accounting for 23 percent of new entrepreneurs in 2010, up from 14.5 percent in 1996.