7-9-2009, 10 Office Faux Pas
by Catherine Clifford
Monday, September 7, 2009provided byCNNMoney.com
You've got a job. Good. Now keep yourself off a potential-layoff list by avoiding bad office behavior. Here are 10 horror stories straight from the trenches.
1. Don't! Be the Office Downer
You don't want to be such a buzz kill that people arrange their desks away from you.
That's what Caroline Melville, owner of virtual administrative service VirtuallySorted.com, had to do after hiring an accountant to work with her small team.
In the mornings, when Melville asked how he was doing, he would respond with a deadpan, "I am not dead yet."
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If the company booked a new client and the office was celebrating their success, he would pipe in with, "Ah, I don't know. I don't know. He might leave."
The eternal optimist didn't stay long. He resigned when his wife got a new job and needed to move. But Melville didn't complain.
"It was quite a sigh of relief for me, actually, because it was quite stressful having someone like that in the office."
2. Don't! Microwave Fish in the Office
Tuna sandwiches are banned from some offices, but fish dishes in the microwave are absolutely off limits.
"I never knew who the culprit was because the kitchen area was not near my desk," says Casey Corrigan, a media strategist at a New York City PR firm. The smell would waft through the office gently at first, and "then you would feel it more pungently."
You don't want your cube mates wishing you would sleep with the fishes.
3. Don't! Go Barefoot
"Everybody wants to wear really cute shoes, and they go out and get five-inch tall Christian Louboutin shoes," reports a tipster who asked to remain anonymous because she feared she would lose her job for outing co-workers.
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"If you cannot walk in them, you should really go for a more sensible shoe."
Resorting to kicking off your stilettos under the desk is permissible at the end of a long day, but "walking around the office barefoot is really gross."
4. Don't! Set Your Ring Tone to the Jonas Brothers
Keep your phone on vibrate. Your officemates notice your ring tone -- especially if it's particularly loud and annoying.
"You would see five or six people who sat around her look at her and roll their eyes," says Richard O'Malley, remembering a former receptionist whose ring tone for her boyfriend was a Jonas Brothers song.
At the sound of the boy-band melody, the woman would leave her desk to take the call. "It wound up working against her because everyone knew that she was slacking off," says O'Malley, who now runs his own event-planning business, The O'Malley Project
Eventually she was let go. And even though her ring tone wasn't specifically at fault, it didn't help. "There were several minor things that built up," says O'Malley.
"If you are the person who has the stupid cell phone ring, everyone has noticed it already. Turn it down."
5. Do! Save Smiley Faces for Mom
Sherry Kerr, the owner of a small public relations agency, hired a recent college graduate to be her assistant and was confronted with an acute case of smiley face overload.
They were on the picture frame, clock, mouse pad, screen saver and a decoy on the monitor. "The desk space itself was really dreadful," says Kerr.
But it didn't end there: She also put smiley faces next to her initials and every single place she signed her name -- including the company's tax forms.
Kerr tried to talk to the assistant about presenting a more professional manner in person and on paper. Her response? "She looked at me with these big round smiley face eyes and said, `It is a part of my signature,'" Kerr remembers.
Kerr eventually had to let her go, for unrelated reasons, but, Kerr says, "I have to confess that I was happy about not seeing smiley faces anymore."
6. Don't! Be the Boss' New BFF
"People who are worried about being laid off end up going overboard to prove that they are indispensable, and that ends up making them seem so obnoxious to people," says Tina Lewis Rowe, a professional development coach.
Rowe consulted at one firm where she watched an employee try to position himself as the boss' right arm. "At every staff meeting he would try to take the meeting over and ask employees report to him to get approval."
Instead of becoming the main man's right-hand, Mr. Sycophant just annoyed the entire office. His co-workers don't have much use for him, and his managers see right through his tricks, Rowe says.
And while he is still at the firm, "he is on shaky ground," she adds.
7. Don't! Read Your Emails Out Loud
Keep a lid on it, neighbor. One wife complained -- on her husband's behalf -- about a coworker who reads her emails out loud. And listens to her voicemails on speakerphone. Seriously.
"My husband works right next (as in their desks are connected with no real divider, like Dwight and Jim on "The Office") to a woman who does all of her work, all day long, out loud," says the woman, who wanted to remain anonymous to protect her husband.
Now her husband has to take any serious reading home and do it at night because he can't concentrate in the office.
8. Don't! Give Yourself a Mani/Pedi
"I had a boss who would clip his nails at his desk," says Michelle Poteet, who now owns Reclaim Order, a San Antonio-based life-organizing company.
"The next position I was at, the guy across from me would clip his nails at his desk, and to me it is the worst sounding thing in the world."
"It would be one thing if you waited until there was background noise, but it always seemed to me that people, would do this when it was dead silence. Getting rid of a hang nail would be fine, but it is another thing if they are giving themselves a complete manicure."
9. Don't! Steal Food
Keep your mitts off other people's frozen lunches. One anonymous reporter out in the field says that her Lean Cuisines disappear from the freezer on a regular basis.
"It has happened pretty much every where that I have worked," complains the office worker in distress.
Not even writing her name in black Sharpie across the box deters thieves. So instead, the lunch lady keeps her thawing Lean Cuisine in her desk.
Yum.
10. Don't! Crank the Russian Folk Music
Headphones, people.
There is no faster way to top "cube rube" status than to crank your music.
"We had one person who was playing Russian folk music all day long," says Megan Slabinski, executive director of The Creative Group, a California-based staffing agency.
The constant drone of Russian folk music got so draining to a freelancer the Group had placed, one of the employees had to ask the company to curb the staffer's habit.
Oddly, management was reluctant to address the issue, reports Slabinski.
"Ultimately, we encouraged them to say, could you please put on a pair of headphones?"
You may think that you are all by your lonesome in your cube, but don't forget about your proximity to others. And if the spirit moves you, and you must have a bit of your motherland's music to get you through your day, headphones, people. Headphones.
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Tuesday, September 8, 2009
8-9-2009, A year after financial crisis, a new world order emerges
By Kevin G. Hall, McClatchy Newspapers Kevin G. Hall, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Tue Sep 8, 3:41 pm ET
WASHINGTON — One year after the near collapse of the global financial system, this much is clear: The financial world as we knew it is over, and something new is rising from its ashes.
Historians will look to September 2008 as a watershed for the U.S. economy.
On Sept. 7 , the government seized mortgage titans Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac . Eight days later, investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, sparking a global financial panic that threatened to topple blue-chip financial institutions around the world. In the several months that followed, governments from Washington to Beijing responded with unprecedented intervention into financial markets and across their economies, seeking to stop the wreckage and stem the damage.
One year later, the easy-money system that financed the boom era from the 1980s until a year ago is smashed. Once-ravenous U.S. consumers are saving money and paying down debt. Banks are building reserves and hoarding cash. And governments are fashioning a new global financial order.
Congress and the Obama administration have lost faith in self-regulated markets. Together, they're writing the most sweeping new regulations over finance since the Great Depression. And in this ever-more-connected global economy, Washington is working with its partners through the G-20 group of nations to develop worldwide rules to govern finance.
"Our objective is to design an economic framework where we're going to have a more balanced pattern of growth globally, less reliant on a buildup of unsustainable borrowing . . . and not just here, but around the world," said Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner .
The first faint signs that the U.S. economy may be clawing its way back from the worst recession since the Great Depression are only now starting to appear, a year after the panic began. Similar indications are sprouting in Europe , China and Japan .
Still, economists concur that a quarter-century of economic growth fueled by cheap credit is over. Many analysts also think that an extended period of slow job growth and suppressed wage growth will keep consumers — and the businesses that sell to them — in the dumps for years.
"Those things are likely to be subpar for a long period of time," said Martin Regalia, the chief economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce . "I think it means that we probably see potential rates of growth that are in the 2-2.5 (percent) range, or maybe . . . 1.8-1.9 (percent)." A growth rate of 3 percent to 3.5 percent is considered average.
The unemployment rate rose to 9.7 percent in August and is expected to peak above 10 percent in the months ahead. It's already there in at least 15 states. Regalia thinks that it could be five years before the U.S. economy generates enough jobs to overcome those lost and to employ the new workers entering the labor force.
All this is likely to keep consumers on the sidelines.
"I think this financial panic and Great Recession is an inflection point for the financial system and the economy," said Mark Zandi , the chief economist for forecaster Moody's Economy.com. "It means much less risk-taking, at least for a number of years to come — a decade or two. That will be evident in less credit and more costly credit. If you are a household or a business, it will cost you more, and it will be more difficult to get that credit."
The numbers bear him out. The Fed's most recent release of credit data showed that consumer credit decreased at an annual rate of 5.2 percent from April to June, after falling by a 3.6 percent annual rate from January to March. Revolving lines of credit, which include credit cards, fell by an annualized 8.9 percent in the first quarter, followed by an 8.2 percent drop in the second quarter.
That's a sea change. For much of the past two decades, strong U.S. growth has come largely through expanding credit. The global economy fed off this trend.
China became a manufacturing hub by selling attractively priced exports to U.S. consumers who were living beyond their means. China's Asian neighbors sent it components for final assembly; Africa and Latin America sold China their raw materials. All fed off U.S. consumers' bottomless appetite for more, bought on credit.
"That's over. Consumers can do their part — spend at a rate consistent with their income growth, but not much beyond that," Zandi said.
If U.S. consumers no longer drive the global economy, then consumers in big emerging economies such as China and Brazil will have to take up some of the slack. Trade among nations will take on greater importance.
In the emerging "new normal," U.S. companies will have to be more competitive. They must sell into big developing markets; yet as the recent Cash for Clunkers effort underscored, the competitive hurdles are high: Foreign-owned automakers, led by Toyota , reaped the most benefit from the U.S. tax breaks for new car purchases, not GM and Chrysler .
Need a loan? Tough luck: Many U.S. banks are in no condition to lend. Around 416 banks are now on a "problem list" and at risk of insolvency. Regulators already have shuttered 81 banks and thrifts this year.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. reported on Aug. 27 that rising loan losses are depleting bank capital. The ratio of bank reserves to bad loans was 63.5 percent from April to June, the lowest it's been since the savings-and-loan crisis in 1991.
For all that, the U.S. economy does seem to be rising off its sickbed. The latest manufacturing data for August point to a return to growth, and home sales are rising. Indeed, there are many encouraging signs emerging in the global economy.
It's all growth from a low starting point, however, and many economists think that there'll be a lower baseline for U.S. and global growth if the new financial order means less risk-taking by lenders and less indebtedness by companies and consumers.
That seems evident now in the U.S. personal savings rate. It fell steadily from 9.59 percent in the 1970s to 2.68 percent in the easy-money era from 2000 to 2008; from 2005 to 2007, it averaged 1.83 percent.
Today, that trend is in reverse. From April to June, Americans' personal savings rate was 5 percent, and it could go higher if the unemployment rate keeps rising. Almost 15 million Americans are unemployed — and countless others are underemployed or uncertain about their job security, so they're spending less and saving more.
A few years ago, banks fell all over themselves to offer cheap home equity loans and lines of consumer credit. No more. Even billions in government bailout dollars to spur lending haven't changed that.
"The strategy that was stated at the beginning of the year — which is that you would sustain the banking system in order that it would resume lending — hasn't worked, and it isn't going to work," said James K. Galbraith , an economist at the University of Texas at Austin .
Over the course of 2008, the nation's five largest banks reduced their consumer loans by 79 percent, real estate loans by 66 percent and commercial loans by 19 percent, according to FDIC data. A wide range of credit measures, including recent FDIC data, show that lending remains depressed.
Why? The foundation of U.S. credit expansion for the past 20 years is in ruin. Since the 1980s, banks haven't kept loans on their balance sheets; instead, they sold them into a secondary market, where they were pooled for sale to investors as securities. The process, called securitization, fueled a rapid expansion of credit to consumers and businesses. By passing their loans on to investors, banks were freed to lend more.
Today, securitization is all but dead. Investors have little appetite for risky securities. Few buyers want a security based on pools of mortgages, car loans, student loans and the like.
"The basis of revival of the system along the line of what previously existed doesn't exist. The foundation that was supposed to be there for the revival (of the economy) . . . got washed away," Galbraith said.
Unless and until securitization rebounds, it will be hard for banks to resume robust lending because they're stuck with loans on their books.
"We've just been scared," said Robert C. Pozen , the chairman of Boston -based MFS Investment Management . He thinks that the freeze in securitization reflects a lack of trust in Wall Street and its products and remains a huge obstacle to the resumption of lending that's vital to an economic recovery.
Enter the Federal Reserve. It now props up the secondary market for pooled loans that are vital to the functioning of the U.S. financial system. The Fed is lending money to investors who're willing to buy the safest pools of loans, called asset-backed securities.
Through Sept. 3 , the Fed had funded purchases of $817.6 billion in mortgage-backed securities. These securities were pooled mostly by mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae , Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae . In recent months, the Fed also has moved aggressively to lend for purchase of pools of other consumer-based loans.
Today, there's little private-sector demand for new loan-based securities; government is virtually the only game in town. That's why on Aug. 17 , the Fed announced that it would extend its program to finance the purchase of pools of loans until mid-2010. That suggests there's still a long way to go before a functioning securitization market — the backbone of consumer lending — returns to a semblance of normalcy.
...............
By Kevin G. Hall, McClatchy Newspapers Kevin G. Hall, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Tue Sep 8, 3:41 pm ET
WASHINGTON — One year after the near collapse of the global financial system, this much is clear: The financial world as we knew it is over, and something new is rising from its ashes.
Historians will look to September 2008 as a watershed for the U.S. economy.
On Sept. 7 , the government seized mortgage titans Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac . Eight days later, investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, sparking a global financial panic that threatened to topple blue-chip financial institutions around the world. In the several months that followed, governments from Washington to Beijing responded with unprecedented intervention into financial markets and across their economies, seeking to stop the wreckage and stem the damage.
One year later, the easy-money system that financed the boom era from the 1980s until a year ago is smashed. Once-ravenous U.S. consumers are saving money and paying down debt. Banks are building reserves and hoarding cash. And governments are fashioning a new global financial order.
Congress and the Obama administration have lost faith in self-regulated markets. Together, they're writing the most sweeping new regulations over finance since the Great Depression. And in this ever-more-connected global economy, Washington is working with its partners through the G-20 group of nations to develop worldwide rules to govern finance.
"Our objective is to design an economic framework where we're going to have a more balanced pattern of growth globally, less reliant on a buildup of unsustainable borrowing . . . and not just here, but around the world," said Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner .
The first faint signs that the U.S. economy may be clawing its way back from the worst recession since the Great Depression are only now starting to appear, a year after the panic began. Similar indications are sprouting in Europe , China and Japan .
Still, economists concur that a quarter-century of economic growth fueled by cheap credit is over. Many analysts also think that an extended period of slow job growth and suppressed wage growth will keep consumers — and the businesses that sell to them — in the dumps for years.
"Those things are likely to be subpar for a long period of time," said Martin Regalia, the chief economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce . "I think it means that we probably see potential rates of growth that are in the 2-2.5 (percent) range, or maybe . . . 1.8-1.9 (percent)." A growth rate of 3 percent to 3.5 percent is considered average.
The unemployment rate rose to 9.7 percent in August and is expected to peak above 10 percent in the months ahead. It's already there in at least 15 states. Regalia thinks that it could be five years before the U.S. economy generates enough jobs to overcome those lost and to employ the new workers entering the labor force.
All this is likely to keep consumers on the sidelines.
"I think this financial panic and Great Recession is an inflection point for the financial system and the economy," said Mark Zandi , the chief economist for forecaster Moody's Economy.com. "It means much less risk-taking, at least for a number of years to come — a decade or two. That will be evident in less credit and more costly credit. If you are a household or a business, it will cost you more, and it will be more difficult to get that credit."
The numbers bear him out. The Fed's most recent release of credit data showed that consumer credit decreased at an annual rate of 5.2 percent from April to June, after falling by a 3.6 percent annual rate from January to March. Revolving lines of credit, which include credit cards, fell by an annualized 8.9 percent in the first quarter, followed by an 8.2 percent drop in the second quarter.
That's a sea change. For much of the past two decades, strong U.S. growth has come largely through expanding credit. The global economy fed off this trend.
China became a manufacturing hub by selling attractively priced exports to U.S. consumers who were living beyond their means. China's Asian neighbors sent it components for final assembly; Africa and Latin America sold China their raw materials. All fed off U.S. consumers' bottomless appetite for more, bought on credit.
"That's over. Consumers can do their part — spend at a rate consistent with their income growth, but not much beyond that," Zandi said.
If U.S. consumers no longer drive the global economy, then consumers in big emerging economies such as China and Brazil will have to take up some of the slack. Trade among nations will take on greater importance.
In the emerging "new normal," U.S. companies will have to be more competitive. They must sell into big developing markets; yet as the recent Cash for Clunkers effort underscored, the competitive hurdles are high: Foreign-owned automakers, led by Toyota , reaped the most benefit from the U.S. tax breaks for new car purchases, not GM and Chrysler .
Need a loan? Tough luck: Many U.S. banks are in no condition to lend. Around 416 banks are now on a "problem list" and at risk of insolvency. Regulators already have shuttered 81 banks and thrifts this year.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. reported on Aug. 27 that rising loan losses are depleting bank capital. The ratio of bank reserves to bad loans was 63.5 percent from April to June, the lowest it's been since the savings-and-loan crisis in 1991.
For all that, the U.S. economy does seem to be rising off its sickbed. The latest manufacturing data for August point to a return to growth, and home sales are rising. Indeed, there are many encouraging signs emerging in the global economy.
It's all growth from a low starting point, however, and many economists think that there'll be a lower baseline for U.S. and global growth if the new financial order means less risk-taking by lenders and less indebtedness by companies and consumers.
That seems evident now in the U.S. personal savings rate. It fell steadily from 9.59 percent in the 1970s to 2.68 percent in the easy-money era from 2000 to 2008; from 2005 to 2007, it averaged 1.83 percent.
Today, that trend is in reverse. From April to June, Americans' personal savings rate was 5 percent, and it could go higher if the unemployment rate keeps rising. Almost 15 million Americans are unemployed — and countless others are underemployed or uncertain about their job security, so they're spending less and saving more.
A few years ago, banks fell all over themselves to offer cheap home equity loans and lines of consumer credit. No more. Even billions in government bailout dollars to spur lending haven't changed that.
"The strategy that was stated at the beginning of the year — which is that you would sustain the banking system in order that it would resume lending — hasn't worked, and it isn't going to work," said James K. Galbraith , an economist at the University of Texas at Austin .
Over the course of 2008, the nation's five largest banks reduced their consumer loans by 79 percent, real estate loans by 66 percent and commercial loans by 19 percent, according to FDIC data. A wide range of credit measures, including recent FDIC data, show that lending remains depressed.
Why? The foundation of U.S. credit expansion for the past 20 years is in ruin. Since the 1980s, banks haven't kept loans on their balance sheets; instead, they sold them into a secondary market, where they were pooled for sale to investors as securities. The process, called securitization, fueled a rapid expansion of credit to consumers and businesses. By passing their loans on to investors, banks were freed to lend more.
Today, securitization is all but dead. Investors have little appetite for risky securities. Few buyers want a security based on pools of mortgages, car loans, student loans and the like.
"The basis of revival of the system along the line of what previously existed doesn't exist. The foundation that was supposed to be there for the revival (of the economy) . . . got washed away," Galbraith said.
Unless and until securitization rebounds, it will be hard for banks to resume robust lending because they're stuck with loans on their books.
"We've just been scared," said Robert C. Pozen , the chairman of Boston -based MFS Investment Management . He thinks that the freeze in securitization reflects a lack of trust in Wall Street and its products and remains a huge obstacle to the resumption of lending that's vital to an economic recovery.
Enter the Federal Reserve. It now props up the secondary market for pooled loans that are vital to the functioning of the U.S. financial system. The Fed is lending money to investors who're willing to buy the safest pools of loans, called asset-backed securities.
Through Sept. 3 , the Fed had funded purchases of $817.6 billion in mortgage-backed securities. These securities were pooled mostly by mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae , Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae . In recent months, the Fed also has moved aggressively to lend for purchase of pools of other consumer-based loans.
Today, there's little private-sector demand for new loan-based securities; government is virtually the only game in town. That's why on Aug. 17 , the Fed announced that it would extend its program to finance the purchase of pools of loans until mid-2010. That suggests there's still a long way to go before a functioning securitization market — the backbone of consumer lending — returns to a semblance of normalcy.
...............
Monday, September 7, 2009
AP: Layoffs toughest on workers young, older
By MIKE SCHNEIDER and ERRIN HAINES, Associated Press Writers Mike Schneider And Errin Haines, Associated Press Writers – Mon Sep 7, 12:11 am ET
ORLANDO, Fla. – Marcus Wells and Shirley Walker view their economic prospects from opposite ends of the age spectrum.
Wells, 25, was initially optimistic about his prospects for finding a new job after he was laid off as a systems analyst in January in San Jose, Calif. Now unemployment has begun to wear on the him, and he believes his age has factored into his frustration.
"More experienced people are getting hired, and they're downgrading their skills to get the job," Wells said. "I feel like I'm competing with older workers, not college graduates. It wears on your confidence."
Walker, 58, lost her job running a nonprofit which helped minority women in business in Orlando and hasn't had any luck finding new work in the three months since.
"What they tell us is that they're looking for more mature and experienced workers, but they want us to work for less, or what they could pay younger people to do," she said recently outside an Orlando job fair. "Maybe younger people would be willing or able to accept lesser pay."
Would-be retirees have watched their savings dwindle and health care costs soar, while workers recently out of school and burdened by debt try to advance in careers that no longer have room for them.
The results show up on the map: Places with high concentrations of people in their late 20s or nearing what they thought would be their retirement age are feeling the recession the hardest, as measured by The Associated Press Economic Stress Index. The index assigns each county a score from 1 to 100, with higher numbers reflecting greater stress, based on its unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcy rates.
California's Santa Clara County, where Wells lives, registered 14.42 on the stress index through June, the most recent month for which figures are available, while Walker's Orange County, Fla., came in at 15.69, both well above the average county's 10.6.
The groups associated with the highest stress scores in each U.S. county are men and women between ages 25 and 29 and women over age 55. That doesn't necessarily mean having a high percentage of people in those groups causes a county's economic health to worsen, though the two appear to go hand in hand.
Experts said a variety of factors may be at play.
Young adults are more at risk for losing their jobs and homes in a recession, while people later in life are more likely to declare bankruptcy in order to protect their assets, said Tay McNamara, director of research at the Center on Aging and Work at Boston College.
"Last hired, first fired. Generally, that is very true," McNamara said.
Chanel Moore knows how that goes. The 25-year-old Orlando resident was laid off last year from a job in retail and has found herself competing with older workers in her jobs searches.
"I'm young, trying to get on my feet, and then you have people older than me who are already on their feet looking for jobs with more experience than me," Moore said.
Workers in the 25 to 34 age group have seen the most dramatic rise in unemployment during the past year compared to other age groups. Their unemployment rate went from 5.7 percent in July 2008 to 10 percent in July 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Compounding the pain for some young workers can be big bills from their careers as students. The average undergraduate finishes college with $17,700 in debt at four-year public schools and $22,375 in debt at four-year private schools. Also, student loan provider Sallie Mae reported this year that seniors graduated college with an average credit card debt of more than $4,100 in 2008, up from $2,900 four years earlier.
If there is a bright side for this age group, it's that they are less likely than older workers to have a family to feed or mortgage to pay.
"They're a pretty flexible group," said Tom Smith, a labor economist at Emory University. "They have fewer ties to a community and can travel or relocate."
Though younger people may be more likely to be laid off, older workers are less likely to recover from a layoff, experts said. Part of the reason stems from the myths surrounding older workers — that they're tough to train, more expensive and not comfortable with new technology, said Joseph Quinn, a professor of economics at Boston College.
"Once they do get laid off, they're really hosed," Quinn said.
Unemployment rates for older workers have increased in this recession more than in past recessions, and the unemployment rate for adults over age 65 is at an all-time high — 7 percent in July. That is up from 3.3 percent at the start of the recession in December 2007, but still below the national unemployment rate of 9.4 percent in July. The previous high was 6.6 percent in February 1977.
The rise in unemployment for older workers is partly the result of a mobile work force that hasn't stayed with a single employer for long periods of time as in the past, said Richard Johnson, a senior fellow at The Urban Institute in Washington.
"What seemed to protect older workers in the past is that they had a lot of seniority," Johnson said. "Now there is much more churning going on with these older workers. Even though they're older and experienced, they haven't been with the employer for very long."
Recent figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics back this up. The BLS data shows that workers over age 55 have found their share of mass layoffs increasing during the past decade — from just over 12 percent in 1999 to almost 18 percent in 2009.
Laid-off older workers are more likely this recession than in past recessions to try to find other jobs, rather than drop out of the labor market, since the tanking of the stock market last year has caused their retirement nest eggs to shrink, Johnson said.
Retirees, and near-retirees, also are more vulnerable to stock market fluctuations than in past decades as retirement benefits have shifted from defined-benefit pensions to 401(k) plans. About two-thirds of assets in 401(k) plans were invested in stocks in 2007, according to a study by the Investment Company Institute.
Estimates vary on how much was lost last year in retirement accounts, though most assessments have those accounts losing about a quarter to a third of their value.
Even though Medicare provides health insurance coverage to those age 65 and older, out-of-pocket medical expenditures increase with age. They were on average $2,900 during a two-year period for those ages 55 to 64 but grew to $4,400 for people age 85 and older, according to a federal Health and Retirement Study survey that was taken in 2002 before prescription drugs were covered by Medicare.
Walker, the Orlando executive, worried recently that she might have to take any job that becomes available to her, no matter if it fits her career path or salary expectations that come with an MBA.
"If you've been out there working, and you have a career, now it's like starting a career all over again," she said.
Out in California, former systems analyst Wells is living with his girlfriend, who supports the couple on her income, and he is looking for jobs outside of his field. Recently, he considered joining the military.
"I'm looking for part-time, temporary ... I'm looking for everything," Wells said. "I don't have another year of emergency funds to tough it out. I'm getting desperate. I'm 25 and I need to start making it happen."
___
Errin Haines reported from Atlanta.
Unemployment Hits 26-Year High: This Is a "Recovery"?
Posted Sep 04, 2009 12:39pm EDT by Peter Gorenstein in Recession
Related: spy, dia, ^dji, ^gspc, qqqq
The economic data continues to get less bad. Should we rejoice? Wall Street has mixed emotions. U.S. employers cut 216,000 jobs in August, fewer than expected and less job cuts than the previous month. Stocks were solidly higher midday in reaction but the unemployment rates now stand at a higher-than-expected 9.7% - the highest since Ronald Reagan's first term in office.
The "good" news about lower-than-expected job cuts is further weighed down by revisions to June and July figures. The Labor Department now says the U.S. lost an additional 49,000 jobs in June and July.
"So in fact we're in a worse situation than people thought we were…slightly," says Justin Fox, the economics reporter for Time and author of 'The Myth of the Rational Market'.
Still, this may prove to be a turning point, Fox says, as many forecasters predict the bleeding will stop by the end of the year. "If that happens then we'll look back at this as another step in this wonderful trajectory towards the end of the ‘Great Recession’," he says.
In another case of things getting less bad, August same-store sales fell 2%, it was the smallest decline since last September. "It's clear we’re not in a great depression," Fox claims. The question now is whether the recession really is ending.
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Posted Sep 04, 2009 12:39pm EDT by Peter Gorenstein in Recession
Related: spy, dia, ^dji, ^gspc, qqqq
The economic data continues to get less bad. Should we rejoice? Wall Street has mixed emotions. U.S. employers cut 216,000 jobs in August, fewer than expected and less job cuts than the previous month. Stocks were solidly higher midday in reaction but the unemployment rates now stand at a higher-than-expected 9.7% - the highest since Ronald Reagan's first term in office.
The "good" news about lower-than-expected job cuts is further weighed down by revisions to June and July figures. The Labor Department now says the U.S. lost an additional 49,000 jobs in June and July.
"So in fact we're in a worse situation than people thought we were…slightly," says Justin Fox, the economics reporter for Time and author of 'The Myth of the Rational Market'.
Still, this may prove to be a turning point, Fox says, as many forecasters predict the bleeding will stop by the end of the year. "If that happens then we'll look back at this as another step in this wonderful trajectory towards the end of the ‘Great Recession’," he says.
In another case of things getting less bad, August same-store sales fell 2%, it was the smallest decline since last September. "It's clear we’re not in a great depression," Fox claims. The question now is whether the recession really is ending.
..............
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