The graying of the American workforce continues: Baby boomers are working longer and earning more than their predecessors did in what Americans typically think of as retirement years, new research finds.
Almost 20% of Americans ages 65 and older were employed this year, according to a new report from Pew Research Center. That’s nearly double the share of those who were working 35 years ago. In total, there are around 11 million Americans 65 or older who are working today, comprising 7% of all wages and salaries paid by U.S. employers. In 1987, they made up 2%.
And not only are more Americans at or above the traditional retirement age of 65 working, but they are also earning substantially more compared with what older workers earned in the 1980s. Now, the typical older worker earns $22 per hour, compared with $13 per hour then. Their wage growth—some of which can be attributed to their working longer hours than older Americans did in the past—has outpaced that of workers ages 25 to 64 over the same time period, according to Pew’s research, which is based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey and the Federal Reserve’s 2022 Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking.
It’s hard to be empathetic for the Boomer generation because they’ve done so much damage.
I wish people would just quit it with this ageist crap.
“We” are not fucked over by “the Boomer generation”, we are fucked over by unchecked capitalists. The struggle is not a generational one but a class struggle. It’s people with money stealing the value of your labor, but the Bezoses of this world sure love how you’re all blaming it on old people and are laughing all the way to the bank.
Shitting on boomers because they had affordable housing and well paying jobs is crab mentality. Everyone should have that, but it’s not the regular folk boomers who took that away from you. They were just lucky to be born at a time when the capitalists hadn’t ruined that yet. About the only thing you can blame them for is that some of them don’t quite understand how exactly the world has changed for the worse for young people, and that their back-in-the-day conventional wisdom doesn’t apply anymore.
Do they vote? Did they not participate in the creation and execution of the modern capitalist system that has ruined things? When confronted with their part in it all do they change? Does the lead in their bodies allow them to be empathetic toward younger generations? Either you are a bit older or you really love meemaw, but regardless they laid the groundwork then took no responsibility for their part in the destruction.
How so? They’re flopping between two parties just like the current generation of voters.
Watch the reactions when I type this:
Vote third party.
The only way voting third party works is if we get rid of “first to the pole” and instead used something like “ranked choice” voting.
Yeah but that’s not in the interest of the current duopoly. They’re not gonna shoot themselves in the foot as long as they keep getting votes doing this
But voting third party doesn’t actually accomplish anything. Take it from someone who did it for decades. It doesn’t shake up or change the system, it just perpetuates the minority rule set up by Project Redmap.
The right way to do it is to vote your conscience locally, until there is enough support at higher levels. Skipping right to voting for third party presidential candidates is simply naive, I’m afraid.
Edit: Steve Hofstetter lays it out well (I wish I could find this one elsewhere) https://m.facebook.com/stevehofstetter/videos/why-voting-third-party-for-president-makes-no-sense/359024631794244/
Same shit boomers say. So don’t blame em.
Dismissing entire groups based on stupid labels is ugly.
What’s interesting about this observation is that you have to conclude voting isn’t the solution. No matter how you vote, either Democrats or Republicans are going to win in 99% of cases. Every vote you deny to one party to teach them a lesson is an implicit vote for the other party. The counts won’t matter so long as one or the other win.
So what’s the moral thing to do? In terms of voting on a national scale, you pick the better option. But on a state and local level, vote for a reasonable third party that’s investing in growth.
And no, that hasn’t been tried before, because none of our current third parties actually want change. They throw away their money at the federal level while rubbing shoulders with oligarchs. We need a party that starts local with a 50 state ground game and then gradually accumulates power through local victories. Creating this party is what we need to figure out what to do.
greens run for local positions near around me but im in a major metropolitan area.
Be the change you seek or stop blaming boomers cause you’re all doing the exact same shit as them.
Voting third party works in other countries but in the American system the only real option is to vote for some fringe wing of one of the parties. Bernie lost with the establishment in the end but he was close. Trump actually won and took over the party. That’s the only way to do it.
Boomers have been saying this shit for decades and I’m not seeing them achieve much.
But you keep doing you.
What do you mean? Trump run the country for 4 years, packed the supreme court and banned abortion. If that’s not much I don’t know what is. Or do you think it doesn’t count because that’s not what you want to achieve?
People blaming the boomers for the current problems have an overly inflated view of the power of ordinary people.
The people are in power are those to blame, not the ordinary people who chose one of the few options presented to them.
They also have collective power as a voting bloc and group that participates actively in local elections