Demographics Plus the Employment Population Ratio
St. Louis Fed writer William Emmons notes the chart is a function of population growth and the Employment-Population ratio.
What’s Driving This Outcome
- The older population (60 and older) grew much faster than the younger population (16-59).
- The employment-to-population (E-P) ratio among those 60 and older increased significantly while the E-P ratio among the younger population declined, on balance.
- The older population is likely to continue growing faster than the younger group.
- The E-P ratio of the 60 and older group is likely to increase further as the health and educational attainment of older people continues to improve and the demand for older workers persists.
The above points from Older Workers Accounted for All Net Employment Growth in Past 20 Years
Burger Biggie
This reminds me of something I said just before and during the great recession. Unfortunately, I cannot find a link but it went like this.
“Parents will be competing with their kids and grandkids for jobs.”
Well here we are.
When I grew up there was hardly anyone over the age of 50 working in fast food chains.
Now? What percentage of fast food, Sam’s Club, or Walmart greeters are under the age of 50? What percentage are part-time?
What About Employer Health Care Coverage?
Note that Health Care Coverage for part-time employees is optional.
Those between the age of 60 and 65 cannot wait to reach the age of 65 so they can get on Medicare.
Obamacare Impact
Thanks to Obamacare, younger workers pay more than their fair share as a subsidy to their parents and grandparents.
Push for $15 Minimum Wage
The push for $15 in minimum wage plus rapidly rising health care costs further incentivizes part-time work, overseas outsourcing, and robotics to eliminate the jobs altogether.
That’s the rest of the story.
Mish
Hello….it doesn’t matter what $ the minimum wage is, for the greater $ the ppl make the bigger the piece is that goes to political entities rather then the ppl it was meant to help, but it’s ok the politicians will just talk lame brains into “ahhh it’s for this it’s for that” meanwhile it’s political careers that should be taken out of business like they did to mom and pop shops that force your mom and dad who became grandparents who would’ve opened that shop but now have to compete for jobs with a 16 yrd. Why is the president the only politician who has a deadline of only 8years and all others get to scam?? Especially with vacations and the political season that’s the worst, the only reason they took off for the summer is because back in 1700s-1800s ac hasn’t been invented yet so they took off for them months cuz no one wants to argue in 100d heat..but now they can do it with ac and they still take the season off????
Oh yeah do you think a higher wage will move people off government support to some degree / make them more dependable workers / and more productive.
CBO estimates that between 0 and 3.7m people will lose their jobs with the minimum wage increase, with and expected value of about 1.3m. On the whole, I’d expect to see an increase in government support, overall, with those getting raises receiving slightly less, and those losing jobs receiving much more.
Im sure 15 dollars may be a big increase in some places. Here in slightly northern ca it seems to be the general base for pretty much any job. Not sure about fast food. If you want a high school kid to
Weed eat your yard its 15 bucks an hour. Exp. see everything grows in the winter and dies by june. So you let it grow then weed wack it once and your done for the summer.
I clearly remember you writing that, Mish.
I remember you writing that, Mish.
The older folks are taking the minimum wage/low hours to supplement social security income for a living income total. The younger generations are not taking the same jobs/hours as they are inadequate as a living wage. They have to take two crap jobs to exist. If a couple with kids, they need to find 4 crap jobs that can mesh/shuffle hours.
Saw it all the time when I ran the local little league. Very difficult to work two jobs, raise kids and go to school. My daughter is currently kicking ass in law school. Between the opportunity cost from quitting her job in UCLA admin and the cost of law school looking at over $500k. I tell the youngsters better to become welders, utility linesmen, a/c techs etc these days. Most of em will never understand SQL or be able to do any decent paying office job.
Setting money aside, at least a job provides self respect and self reliance. Living off welfare is a disaster. As only one example, just look at the majority of Native Americans who have been given aide for centuries and for the most part have remained impoverished and unemployed. It is not by any means their fault. It is the lack of employment and the devastating effect it has on an individual, no matter their color. Remember, idleness is the devil’s workshop. My advice: Take a job no matter the pay. Do a good job, work hard and your pay will increase. We humans are not entitled to anything, no matter what politicians lead you to believe. Get a job – you will feel better about yourself!
You fools! The younger just need to join the Wallstreetbets crowd and trade their way to riches.
IMO the US turned away from education in trades when we outsourced manufacturing, and turned to higher education to add value to our workforce. However, so did other countries seeking more valuable, educated workers, even if they kept their trades education. Germany comes to mind.
There are definite problems in American Education, but solving will not be simple, and I dare say, will not happen. If you want a shock, pick up a set of McGuffey readers from the 1880’s, and it is shocking how much higher the expectations for students were 140 years ago. Today, students have more to learn, and lower expectations for the amount they should learn each year.
American Education probably will get fixed, by medium of destruction and financial support disappearing once we all pay for our MMT sins.
Thank goodness for Corona, I was getting sick of tertiary educational institutions offering “core courses” and other nonsense; the MMT game was also taking too long but now it’s exponential, yeehaw.
People need education on how to do the jobs we desperately need for the future and experience doing those jobs (including arts or writing); but they don’t need to pay 5 figure amounts to support sporting halls and other nonsense. They also don’t need to be opining on the mysteries of the universe with Aristotle and Socrates; that’s for a bookclub.
The old adage “put your own oxygen mask on first” comes to mind.
Increasing the supply of unskilled labour into the pool before sorting out problems is a recipe for disaster socially. The only beneficiary is capital, not “the people”. The “people” will begin to war against each other as resources become more stretched & politicians look on and repeat the same policies and behaviours that created the problems.
Unfortunately I see nothing on the horizon to improve the situation, only for it to worsen.
The wealth effect in equities and housing is due to reverse adding fuel to the fire in the middle class as they are pushed down in the wealth ladder to the masses beneath.
A hard rains gonna fall and Trump will bless the day Biden and his team took over.
I’m sorry these reads so negatively, I hate these thoughts & hope I am wrong.
This is historic, the self-destruction of the most powerful nation on earth.
You can’t stop it…the mass migration. You can slow it down….you can take a hard line….but I doubt it can be managed effectively with walls or technology. I’m not in favor of it….I just think it’s fairly inevitable.
It’s a long the lines of colonization in reverse. Don’t encourage development in poorer places or go there to take-over, take their people instead. Youth and vitality taken from source and source remains powerless and poor and only good to take natural resources from.
If politicians cared they would help development, not taking people, but that involves reducing their perceived global power.
It ends in tears when the growth engine stops and the poor fight over resources and finally join up to fight the system. It will happen and politicians will know fear. Rinse repeat, has happen many times over in history.
Bad decisions and policies going back 25 or more years are coming to bite us in the ass. The “fix” will take multiple Presidential terms and a roadmap both sides of the aisle agree to stick to.
Both parties are tarred with the same brush, neither are fitted to the task. Perhaps a 3rd will arrive on scene.
The problems are structural and moral, throwing money alone won’t fix it, only delay the collapse.
re: “A hard rains gonna fall and Trump will bless the day Biden and his team took over.”
Just as Biden and his ilk are blessing the day that Trump took over. There is no way his agenda could have happened without Trump. Unfortunately, it would seem that Trump is going to stick around, so I’m expecting the Biden team to be able to push through a lot more of the liberal agenda in their time than we’ve seen since 1932. I don’t expect the Republicans to be able to regroup for at least a dozen year. In 1932 it took 20 years, so 12 isn’t so long, I guess.
None of them know what they are doing.
“90% of success is just showing up.” – Alan Stewart Konigsberg
“”Never complain, never explain” – Henry Ford II
The other 10% is a combination of engaing and not being an ass-hole.
The statistic that you cite is a symptom of poor economic growth caused by many factors including ZIRP but “Obamacare” had little to do with it.
The ACA (Obamacare) cost impact on younger adults only affects those who buy health care individually not through employer provided plans so the ACA doesn’t incentivize part time work. What incentivizes part time work is the requirement to provide health care coverage only to full time workers. So to make it fair either remove the requirement to provide health care coverage to employees or include the requirement to provide pro-rata health care coverage to part time employees. The health care system is totally screwed up in this country but it is not the fault of the ACA. The ACA is an imperfect attempt to make coverage more affordable. Almost all other developed countries do better for less. If the young adult does not qualify for an employer provided plan then there is a good chance that if his parents are providing him coverage through ACA they are saving more money on their own health care than they pay extra for their adult children.
When the only thing the two parties agree on is spending trillions on the war machine that’s what you get.
It’s essentially impossible to provide coverage for part time employees. Companies would have to provide it for someone who worked just 1-2 hours a week. So there has to be a cut-off point someplace. As soon as you define that cutoff point, that’s where companies will limit hours in order to not provide coverage. Whether it’s 28 or 20 or 10 hours. You’d just end up with people working 4 10 hr jobs instead of a 28 and a 12.
ACA dramatically increased prices for anyone who had to buy care on their exchanges. It’s not lowered prices at all for anyone who is using it. That’s why everyone who can gets on a company plan or medicaid. If it was actually lowering costs, everyone would opt out of company coverage for ACA. It’s a disaster and will remain one until it collapses.
Also in defense of the ACA and paying “fair share”…
Those same young people will be older someday themselves and they will need to afford health coverage also. As such, some subsidy from young folks is reasonable. That’s not that unusual either, it’s what almost every other country does (where BTW healthcare premiums usually are based on income not age).
“Also in defense of the ACA and paying “fair share”…”
The whole “Who’ll pay for it?” debate discourages me when almost no one asks why supply & pharma mark-ups are so massive.
We should be asking “Why do we pay this much?”.
I have a friend in medical supply sales, makes more than most primary care physicians selling to hospitals, a large fraction of his income is indirectly subsidized by Medicare.
Actually, Medicare is pretty notorious for having rather low reimbursement rates to providers, and as a program is run quite efficiently. Providers though have no choice but to accept it due to its size. Much of the overspend actually happens on the commercial side of things.
Hard to disagree with Rudy, maybe a few years around the GFC, but to keep it up for 11+ years was moronic.
At age 68, I started to reduce my work. Started to collect Social Security.
At age 70.5, I reduced my work by another 80%.
At age 72, I am down to 20 minutes/day.
I expect to be at zero soon.
Why should I work? We have $1.9M in our retirement accounts.
I had an employee who died getting ready for work at age 88. He didn’t come to work for money, and whenever I gave him a raise, he tried to decline. People would ask him “Marion, why are you still working at your age?” He’d get a twinkle in his eye and answer “I suppose you’re right. I should retire. I could be in a home somewhere, hoping people would come visit me, or I could be here, and have people visit me all day every day.”
1. Well, I have worked from home since 1996. So, no one visits me.
2. I bill $100/hour for my time, but now, I am too lazy to prospect to keep the business going.
I believe I have seen you post that anecdote before and, frankly, wouldn’t mind reading it another dozen times in the years to come.
Then I’ll add a few more details. He started for the company in 1929, and had a heart attack getting dressed for work in 1998. He did take a year and a half off during WWI, 6 months in boot camp, one day on Omaha Beach, and a year in hospitals. He never complained, and he enjoyed life, and enjoyed people.
I’ll also add another anecdote for you, about a lady who I was on a bowling team with, once. She was 65 when her husband passed away. On his death bed, he told her “Sally, when I’m gone, I want you to do one thing for me. I want you to sell the car, and never drive again.” She said she had no idea why he would have requested that, of all things, but she promised she would, and honored his request. When she went to work, she walked. She walked everywhere. When she went to the Mall, 5 miles away, on a snowy December day, she walked. She worked at the State Capitol, and everyone knew her, and loved her. They had a big article about her in the paper, on her 100th birthday, and even at 100, she was damn fit.
So long as I am healthy and able to work, I plan to keep getting up, and going to work. I’ve seen far too many people retire, then do all those things they have always wanted to do, but a couple years later, lose purpose, and spiral downhill. Those that did retire and stay healthy were the ones who stayed active, who had a mission, and a reason to get out of bed every morning.
That is quite a track record! I suspect he might be amused at parts of his story continuing to be told and inspiring strangers who never met him all these years later.
That is a curious tale. I won’t speculate on his motivation and just observe that the lasting dedication to her spouse was remarkable and also appears to have served her well.
A sense of purpose is valuable at any age and certainly makes it easier to keep good spirits during one’s days. Good luck maintaining yours for many years to come.
Same to you, and thanks. Having a need and desire to live not only has a primary impact on your health and attitude, it also motivates you do eat right and exercise, but of which also extend your life. For a long, healthy life, I don’t think the answer is “never retire”; it is “stay active, and enjoy life, and have goals, and things to accomplish.” If that comes from work, great. If it comes from social work, great. If it comes from caring for family, great. Whatever the reason, stay active, and keep learning things, and enjoy life.
You most definitely came to that exact conclusion years ago.
That chart also shows that the economic losses from Covid were shifted from older people to the young people least (almost not) vulnerable to it. Expect more riots this summer. and this chart doesnt even pick up socialization and developmental losses from remote/closed schools, etc.
Purely anecdotal, but bears mention, Millennial work ethic is a turn-off to some employers.
I’ve had experiences with Millennials where they’ll argue for 15 minutes whether or not a five minute task is their responsibility, the same task employee’s over 50 just do.
I’ve heard numerous similar experiences with friends my age dealing with this age group.
IMO, this is the result of politically correct parenting of the 80’s-90’s+, children raised of the belief that right or wrong is negotiable and the worst that can happen is a “time out in the corner”.
At my work a female Millenial has pulled several high profile conniption fits in the middle of meetings and walked out saying things like “i can’t take this right now” and “don’t you understand how stressful my life is right now” and other nonsense. The company allowed her to take a sabbatical for 4 months and she is back at her job.
Many of these people went from getting coddled at school, then coddled at college and then coddled by the firms that hired them. At some point the bill will come due for all this kind of coddling induced child-like behavior and we will see an end to general tolerance for this kind of thing. When the barrel runs dry it all changes.
We have had a few millenials work for us, but they never stay long, and haven’t been that good of employees anyway. They take very long bathroom breaks (to check Facebook???), and complain that we expect too much from them and pay them too little, then throw a hissy fit and leave.
With a $15/minimum, I’ll be reducing staffing by at least 2, and the ones to go will be good employees – all my employees are wonderful, to be honest. They will undoubtedly find jobs, and displace millenials somewhere else.
I love broad slams like this.
My manager regularly makes cracks about “millennials.” More than half the department is made of that particular demographic. And we’re the ones that put in overtime without complaint and cover for the older workers when they can’t keep up with the workload. After I pointed this out, she told me that “I didn’t mean you guys. You’re great. Just Millennials in general.”
My two boomer coworkers routinely refuse to do their jobs because they threaten to retire and nobody can make them. Several other Gen-X coworkers are legendary for being unmanageable and throw screaming fits if you dare ask them even a question about something they consider outside their job description.
In my experience, it’s not the millennial work ethic that’s the turnoff. It’s the prejudice the older generations continue to bring to the table. I can be just as competent as someone ten years older was at my age, but I have to work twice as hard to prove it because of management prejudice.
Definitely not an issue with you, just millennials i general
Just so you know, things were the same when we were young. Boomers were terrible employees at 20, and our managers didn’t think much of us. “What’s the young generation coming to?” We were hippies, and lazy, and useless, according to them. But, we grew up. Every generation thinks they are different than the ones before, but not as much different as they like to think.
Exactly. Every generation has it’s problem employees. The boomers didn’t “grow up.” They inherited power and money, leveraged it to stay on top, and blamed everyone else for their own shortcomings. That’s not being mature, that’s being a parasite.
In one comment you wryly wrote: “I love broad slams like this.” and then in another comment go on to broadly slam an entire generation (one that you are not a member of). It is efficient to cast aspersions on large groups, but it is clearly wrongheaded if you happen to be in the group being derided.
I’m unconvinced that Boomers in the United States “grew up” when a staggering amount of them believe in QAnon fairy tales. Aren’t those things written for children?
If we want to generalize we can also talk about a general unwillingness to embrace digital change which can also be seen in many dinosaur American companies continuing to use systems from the 1990s-2000s.
Meanwhile the average age of an employee at Google is 29. Weird.
“I’m unconvinced that Boomers in the United States “grew up” when a staggering amount of them believe in QAnon fairy tales. Aren’t those things written for children?””
Good point, boomers have a reactive temperament, proud & easily provoked, I suspect Qanon is the effort of a foreign adversary to exact a measure of divisiveness in U.S. politics.
I’m not a boomer.
“Meanwhile the average age of an employee at Google is 29. Weird.”
I’d served the military, cut my teeth and gone into business for myself by that age.
I’m not a Millennial.
I’ll have to say I’m coming around to the notion that a $15/hr minimum wage is a bad thing. More especially because of mass migration and the continued likelihood that we will have no choice but to continue to assimilate so many uneducated young non-English speaking economic and social refugees…..which is really what we have at the border.
It denies people the right to better themselves by working harder and longer….which is the only way those people are about to improve their lot. Native born citizens are so indoctrinated with a sense of entitlement that I doubt many of them would benefit….but the people with the guts to walk a thousand miles to get here? They would benefit….and the economy would benefit.
So…no way we do anything here but the wrong thing….it is frustrating to see the same mistakes being made…expecting different outcomes.
I am not competing with my children…I am working FOR the benefit of my children, ultimately. I am in a position to make the rest of their lives better, unless I let the medical-industrial complex eat my wealth…..not planning for that to happen.
Only barely coming around?
Don’t confuse desperation and the promise of free benefits with guts. These people are not heroic and are only as ‘hard working’ as the circumstances require. They walk thousands of miles to get here because they know full well the range of benefits they get. In general they do not really better themselves in any meaningful way – here in Southern California i’ve encountered many who’ve been here for 10 or 20 years and can barely even put together a simple sentence in English.
I’ve lived and known legal and illegal immigrants for my whole life. To characterize that huge mass of people as being any one thing, or one type of person, is naive, in my view.
The reason they don’t learn English is because they don’t have to….we’ve made it very easy to get along without that. I know people who were born here, who are citizens, who can’t speak English….I deal with them daily in my work.
I personally know people who are decent, hard-working, sober….even deeply religious, some of them. They come here to build a life for their kids. They are, many of them, willing to do just about anything in the way of work.
Texas never had Cali level benefits….there certainly are some, but NONE for illegals…not anymore.
Nobody walks a thousand miles with no money, no food, and carrying a kid, unless they have to, in my view. I have a different view of some folks who came here in earlier times…or those who have grown up here without assimilating…..and who have taken full advantage of all the programs we used to have (maybe still have in some places?)…and who have not necessarily bootstrapped themselves.
When you incentive having kids out of wedlock…you get that class of dependent people…which..one it gets started….persists for generations. Gets worse….and it is plenty bad.
Ask yourself how much benefit Detroit would get from 100K immigrants.
A lot.