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Older Americans Fear Never Working Again: What About Older African Americans?

By Alexis Stodghill on Sep 20th 2010 12:25AM
Filed under: News

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older unemployed african american
The New York Times is reporting on the growing numbers of Americans over 50 who fear never being able to find work again as the recession continues. As jobs are being added to the economy very slowly, younger workers might be pushing older applicants out of the pool of most-desired employees, leaving a larger and larger a group of people in need of jobs as they approach their planned age of retirement. One such woman has a particularly startling and sad story:

Patricia Reid is not in her 70s, an age when many Americans continue to work. She is not even in her 60s. She is just 57.

But four years after losing her job she cannot, in her darkest moments, escape a nagging thought: she may never work again.

College educated, with a degree in business administration, she is experienced, having worked for two decades as an internal auditor and analyst at Boeing before losing that job.

But that does not seem to matter, not for her and not for a growing number of people in their 50s and 60s who desperately want or need to work to pay for retirement and who are starting to worry that they may be discarded from the work force - forever.
Since the economic collapse, there are not enough jobs being created for the population as a whole, much less for those in the twilight of their careers.

Of the 14.9 million unemployed, more than 2.2 million are 55 or older. Nearly half of them have been unemployed six months or longer, according to the Labor Department. The unemployment rate in the group - 7.3 percent - is at a record, more than double what it was at the beginning of the latest recession.

After other recent downturns, older people who lost jobs fretted about how long it would take to return to the work force and worried that they might never recover their former incomes. But today, because it will take years to absorb the giant pool of unemployed at the economy's recent pace, many of these older people may simply age out of the labor force before their luck changes.


Please read the rest of this riveting story on The New York Times.

We know that when an economic situation is adversely affecting the general population, it tends to cut more deeply and negatively into the affairs of the African American community. While many people are aware of the fact that unemployment is hitting black youth hard with a rate of 32 percent, it seems that the plight of older African Americans is still a story that remains untold. An attempt to find statistics or articles covering this issue yielded meager results, showing that the media does not see the plight of older blacks in need of work as worthy of coverage -- yet we know they are out there and must be facing a harder battle.

Related:
+New HBCU Network May Debut During Black History Month
+National Black MBA Association to Hold 32nd Annual National Conference

Government and civic leaders must wake up to the reality of how unemployed, older blacks are likely suffering deeply given the current economic circumstances. The saying goes that when America catches a cold, black Americans get the flu. If The New York Times is reporting that older Americans can't get jobs, older African Americans might be facing a dire level of economic crisis -- that no one is paying attention to. This is something our leaders must immediately address.

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