Republicans Want People to Work Until They Drop

Why is the labor participation rate going down?  And is that a bad thing?  Is that also Obama's fault?

As the unemployment rate has started to decline, the Republicans now want to move the goalposts.  They want to count unemployment using the U-6 underemployment rate instead of the U-3 unemployment rate that has been used forever.  (More about this later.)   

And they want to say that people who are "not in the labor force" are really "unemployed".  Of course, most of those people "not in the labor force" are retired, in school, home with children, disabled.  The Republicans haven't yet managed to keep people from retiring, so they are now complaining about the declining "labor participation rate".

Here's what the labor participation rate graph (from the BLS website) looks like over the last 60 years:

Labor Participation Rate in the U.S. 1948 to present

This article at the National Journal talks about a poll in which people discuss whether or not they think they are better off than they were a year ago and whether or not they think they will be better off a year from now.  

Of course, many of the comments start with, "I'll be much better off when Obama is out of the White House." I did address some of those people, and you can see some of my comments down below the article.  But here is one comment by "Mojo the Awkward" that centers on the labor participation rate that I was easily able to debunk:

Here's a cute factoid. The month Obama took office, the labor force declined by more than 700,000. The average over the previous months was around 25,000.

The number of Americans 'not in the labor force' had risen steadily under Bush (although Bush did also create millions of net jobs - six million in his second term, which is rather more impressive than Obama's net 129,000 to date) - but the rate of its increase became steeper the day Obama was sworn in and has kept up that accelerated pace since (which is why there are now nearly 90 million Americans 'not in the labor force' but conveniently omitted from headline unemployment stats).

(I did not address his comments about Bush in my reply.  But I do talk about comparisons between Bush and Obama, including this poster's assertions, HERE, in the article "Private Sector Job Growth Higher Under Obama than Bush?") 

My reply to this person: 

Hard to imagine where people get their numbers.. None of this stuff is hard to find.

Do you know what the "labor force" is?  If not, I would suggest that you look it up.  In any case, the average labor force throughout 2008 was about 140,000 more than the average throughout 2009.  

What is the labor force participation rate anyway? 

The number "not in the labor force", while impacted by economic factors, is mostly influenced by demographics.  The labor force participation rate is the percentage of the number of people in the "civilian non-institutional population 16+" who are either working or actively looking for work.  The people who are not either working nor actively looking for work are "not in the labor force".  

The average labor force participation started to take off in the late 60's/early 70's, and it peaked at 67.1% in Clinton's second term.

It's gone down for many reasons, mostly due to demographics.  We've added 29,000,000 people to our "civilian non-institutional population 16+" since January 2001, and a whopping 21,600,000 of them are people who are 55 or over.  Since the Republicans haven't found a way (yet) of forcing us to work until we keel over, people 55+ are actually STILL retiring.  

Not only do the despicable Republicans want to cut benefits that might help older people retire, now they want to play with employment statistics and count seniors among the "unemployed" as well, as you attempted to do.  Why don't you and other Republican supporters think that people, after decades of working, deserve to retire while they are in decent health and can enjoy their golden years?  And the simple fact that most older people can still manage to retire (perhaps because the stock market is back up?) is somehow used AGAINST Obama?

Something else is happening that you Republican supporters might not be aware of:  The age at which the Baby Boomers can retire with full Social Security is now 66.   The vanguard of the Baby Boomers, people born in 1946, turn 66 this year.  We can expect that a hundred or two hundred thousands of such people are going to be exiting the labor force each month this year.. and each month for years ahead.

A lower labor participation rate isn't necessarily a bad thing. 

Let's be honest:  As much as the Republicans want to blame Obama for the falling labor participation rate,  a lower labor participation rate isn't necessarily a bad thing.  Back in the heyday of unions and high marginal tax rates, the labor participation rate was low as families could actually survive on ONE salary.  One parent, usually Mom, could actually stay home with the kids.  

The labor participation rate among older people went down around the time that Medicare was established.  Not a bad thing..  People didn't have to hang onto their jobs until they dropped to maintain medical insurance.  A lower labor participation rate also means that kids can go to and stay in school, high school or college, and many of them don't HAVE to work.  They can concentrate on their studies at least during the school year, which, as a parent and teacher, I always felt was a good thing. 

And we do ask people who are "not in the labor force" if they want to work (but haven't looked for some reason).  93% of them don't want to work.  Among people 55+, that number is even higher.  About 97% of those people do not want to work.

But you and other Republicans think it is a bad thing that people who want to retire can still retire.  

O.K., O.K., I know that complaining about the labor force participation rate is not the same as telling old people that they should work until they drop.  But if you are going to count an 80 year old Grandpa who hasn't worked for 20

years as "unemployed", well.. what's the connotation of "unemployed"?

In any event, will the original poster reply to me?  So far only crickets. 

Social Security: Don't Raise the Retirement Age!

Should we raise the retirement age for Social Security? Aren't we living longer?

Updated for November 2012--- with no changes; everything is still true.

Updated again in July 2015--  with minor changes; everything is STILL true. 

Found at the Nation of Change blog.

Some people, concerned about the financial future of Social Security and concerned about the national debt, are suggesting (again) that the retirement age be raised. They say that we now live 16 years longer than we did when Social Security was first implemented; therefore, we can certainly raise the retirement age a few years.

Except that this is not really true.

Life expectancy at birth vs. additional life expectancy at a given age: Two different things.

That 16 year difference is based on life expectancy at birth, which has gone up about 16 years since the late 30's. But, for people who survive birth and young adulthood and make it to 60, their life expectancy has not increased that much.

People who live to be 65 now only have about 4 or 5 more years of life expectancy than people who lived to be 65 back when Social Security was established. And we've already raised the retirement age by two of those years!

When they raised the retirement age in the 1980's-- 

We last raised the retirement age in the early 80's for those born in 1938 or later. The people these changes were going to hit, the Baby Boomers and the WWII kids, were decades away from Social Security at the time. 

I wrote the following in one of my earlier posts about Medicare (READ HERE):

When they raised the retirement age in the 80's...

We need the younger people to realize that you don't stay young forever. When they raised the retirement age a couple of decades back in the 80s,few Baby Boomers made a peep because we were strong, young, healthy, and thought we would keep our high-payin­g jobs forever. Hah!

Now many Baby Boomers have been hit hard by the recession. Some are among the saddest victims. These older people in their 50's and 60's have been tossed out of work after decades of fruitful labor. Many are experiencing long-term unemployme­nt; many have gone through their savings and 401K's and don't have health insurance. 

Those extra years until full retirement are weighing heavily on many of us. Retiring with full benefits at 65 is now just a dream.

What is our "life expectancy" these days? 

So, with that in mind, let's look at the numbers on life expectancy.

Based on tables found at Infoplease, which are based on data taken from the US Census Bureau, the additional life expectancy of a 60 year old in the mid 2000's is somewhere between four and seven years more than it was in the late 30's.

Two Extra Years, Not 16

For 70 year olds, the additional life expectancy is between two and six more years now than it was in the 30's when Social Security was establishe­d. What this means is that, in the late 30's, someone in their mid 60's could expect to live to about age 78, give or a take a year or two depending on sex and race. Now (data from the mid 2000's), someone in their mid 60's can expect to live to live to about 82 or 83, give or take a year or two depending on sex and race. That's a difference of 4 to 5 years, and we've already raised the retirement age by 2 of those years. So that means that people now have, on average, TWO ADDITIONAL YEARS of living after they qualify for full retirement than people did in the 30's. TWO YEARS, not 16. 

And then there are those "extra workable years": 

Also, these figures don't account for extra "workable" years. People may be living two years longer than the retirement age than they were in the 30's, but that doesn't mean that people are able to work for two more years. 35% of people over 65 are considered disabled, but it is safe to assume that many of the other 65% of people over 65 have minor disabilities that would make it difficult for them to work full-time demanding jobs... and also make them less desirable for employers.

Finding a job after 65? 

Those figures also don't account for the simple fact that older people can't get hired. People over 65 have a low (about 3.9% as of June 2015) unemployme­nt rate, but that is because so few of them are in the work force (less than 19%).  And 40% of those 65+ who do work are working part-time.  Could they really find full-time jobs and actually perform the required work?

Seniors will go without income for years before they can collect.

Raising the retirement age, even a year or two, really isn't practical, and it will leave many seniors without any income for years before they can collect social security. 

But Jeb Bush and the Republicans? 

But many Republicans couldn't give one hoot about that now, could they? They already consider Social Security an "entitlement" and that Social Security recipients are "takers" instead of "makers". If Grandma hasn't saved enough and "planned" well enough to allow her to survive without the "governmen­t dole", she deserves whatever she gets. Charming people, aren't they?

O.K., people: Write your Congresspeople; write the President; write the Presidential candidates.

Hang tough. Don't let them mess with Social Security and Medicare!

Keep Your Hands Off of My (Son's) Medicare!

Who Is Really Going to Trash Medicare?

Last year during the health care debate, the Republicans were able to convince many older people that the Dems were going to change or trash Medicare.  They had oldsters holding signs that said, "Keep Your Hands Off of My Medicare!".  

Well now, a year later, the Republicans are actually the guys proposing to dismantle Medicare, as laid out in Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan's latest budget.  I'm not surprised; are you?    

Gloomy about Retirement? Get GOP-out!

"Gloomy about retirement­, listless, no energy, right wing corrupt governors got ya down? Use GOP-out, the proven formula to get even the most stubborn tea stains and Koch can rings out of your life! Seriously vote the GOP/teapup­pets out of office, expose their corrupt business masters (Murdoch, Koch, etc) and restore the laws that protect us from these predators (Glass-Ste­agall, Sherman Anti trust etc). But YOU have to do it! Get them out and save our Country, do it and don't stop!"

Great comment on this thread article about workers being fearful of retirement at Huffington Post:

GOP-out.. It's cheap:  Just say no to the GOP!