Employment Trends: Young Adults and Older Workers

The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce and The Generations Initiative have published a report analyzing the "divergent labor market trends for young and older adults since 1980." The major findings of the report entitled Failure to Launch: Structural Shift and the New Lost Generation are:

• In 1980, young adults reached the middle of the wage distribution at age 26; today, they do not reach the same point until age 30. For young African Americans, it has increased from age 25 to 33.
• Young adults’ labor force participation rate has returned to its 1972 level, a decline that started in the late 1980s and has accelerated since 2000.
• Older workers aren't crowding young adults out of the labor market: there are more job openings created from retirements per young person today than there were in the 1990s.
• The 2000s were a lost decade for young adults. Between 2000 and 2012, the employment rate for young fell from 84 percent to 72 percent.
• Opportunities have especially dwindled for young men, high school graduates, and young African Americans.

Read the full report and/or the executive summary.

Research Center for the Prevention of Financial Fraud

The Stanford University Center on Longevity and the FINRA Investor Education Foundation have joined forces to create the Research Center on the Prevention of Financial Fraud. The center is an "interdisciplinary resource for law enforcement, government and research groups studying financial fraud." The center plans to address the following questions:

• Who is most susceptible to financial fraud?
• How can people be effectively protected against fraud?
• What techniques do fraudsters use to persuade victims?
• Why do people fall victim to fraud?
• What is the economic and emotional impact of fraud in the U.S.?

If the fraud is committed online, the United States Department of Justice addresses fraud and cybercrime on its Computer Crime & Intellectual Property Section page which includes information about how to report cyber and IP crime.

Older Population

The Census Bureau has released today, Monday, July 20, 2009 a study entitled, An Aging World: 2008. Commissioned by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Aging, the study contains detailed international information about life expectancy; health; disability; gender balance; marital status; living arrangements; education and literacy; labor force participation and retirement; and pensions.

Statistics that might be surprising include the current rate of growth of older people in developing countries is more than double that in developed nations. Also, the so-called "oldest old" or those 80 and above are the fastest growing portion of the total population in many countries. For more details about the report, see NIH News.