Friday, February 01, 2013

Jobs Report-Name The Movie: "The Young Perish and the Old Linger."

This graph says it all.  Well, not all of it.  Rather, it paints a dismal picture of the nation's current labor demographics.  I'll paste the chart in the post in case the link fails.  The graph shows that the only age group adding jobs consistently since the end of the recession (June '09) has been the 55-69 year old group.  While the young, the semi-young, and the middle-aged have seen their job prospects dimmed considerably.  What's the deal?

Tyler Durden (yes from Fight Club) from the website ZeroHedge attributes this to the devaluation of retirement accounts due to easy monetary policy and the resulting necessity for those age 55+ to reenter the workforce in diminished capacities.  Example: Panera Bread in North OKC now has several baby boomers in its employ, recent hires I believe.  These individuals are not as productive as they were at their original jobs, in their chosen careers and professions.  Yet the labor report from the BLS does not distinguish between fully employed at one's most productive capacity and flipping burgers.  Cheering a rise in non-farm payrolls enjoyed almost exclusively by underemployed baby boomers is...well, it's not cheering.  So don't cheer.






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