A Reluctance to Retire Means Fewer Openings
September 4, 2009 by admin
Filed under Career News and Advice
To the long list of reasons American companies aren’t hiring — business losses, tight credit, consumer retrenchment — add the fact that many of their older workers are unable, or afraid, to retire.
Phil Sears for The New York Times
Ned and Barbara Petrucci lost about 35 percent of their life savings and have made only a little of it back in recent months.
In other parts of the developed world, people are retiring as planned, because of relatively flush state and corporate pensions that await them. But here in the United States, financial security in old age rests increasingly on private savings, which have taken a beating in the last year. Prospective retirees are clinging to their jobs despite some cherished life plans.
As a result, companies are not only reluctant to create new jobs, but have fewer job openings to fill from attrition. For the 14 million Americans looking for work — a number expected to rise in Friday’s jobs report for August — this lack of turnover has made a tough job market even tougher.
Consider Barbara Petrucci, a dialysis nurse who had expected to stop working soon, or at least scale back to part time. Now that her family savings have been depleted by market declines, she expects to stay on the job for a long, long time.
“Retirement is kind of an elusive dream at this point,” says Ms. Petrucci, 58, who works at an Atlanta hospital while her retired husband, Ned, 61, interviews for jobs (unsuccessfully, so far). “We tease at work about someday having to go around at the hospital with our walkers.”
The erted …
Read the original article at NYTimes
