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2011 Archives

Long-term trends: delayed retirement, youth unemployment

Excerpt

The following is from the July 22, 2011, edition of The Daily Caller. Michael Cox, director of the William J. O’Neil Center for Global Markets and Freedom in SMU's Cox School of Business, provided expertise for this story.

August 2, 2011

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.”

Read the full story.

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