Long-term trends: delayed retirement, youth unemployment
SMU Professor Michael Cox, former chief economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, talks about those who retire late in life and unemployment among the young.
By T. Elliot Gaiser
The Daily Caller
The number of people retiring later in life has increased according to AARP, with 33 percent of survey respondents saying they planned to delay retirement. An additional 44 percent say they intend to work part-time even after retiring.
This comes as an increasing number of young workers voice concerns that they can’t break into the job market. (RELATED: Young, Hispanic, and leaning right?)
Some have suggested that older workers, fearful about futures made uncertain by the recession, are forming a “gray ceiling” for young jobseekers by lingering in the work force.
Economic uncertainty may be one reason for delayed retirement, but it also fits into a larger pattern, according to economist Michael Cox.
“If you look at the talents people are getting paid for –– their contacts, people skills, imagination, emotional intelligence –– the work world has changed so that it favors the old,” said Cox, a professor of economics at Southern Methodist University. “It favors the mental world. It favors experience.”
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