Squared Away Blog

White men have the most success over the course of their lives in holding on to well-paying jobs that require high-level analytical abilities and interpersonal skills, a new study finds. They have so much success that they often remain in this challenging non-routine work – astronomer, community college instructor, and analyst are examples – well into their 60s and even 70s. This isn’t the case for everyone else. White women and also Asian-American men and women with college degrees also frequently start their careers in positions with demands that are similar to white men. But after they pass their prime working years, this type of work declines, in sharp contrast to white men’s career paths, the researchers found. For example,…

The share of Americans who lack health insurance is at historic lows. Even so, being uninsured and underinsured is a problem. I’ve seen what this means for members of my own family. Example 1: a man in his early 60s with a high-deductible employer plan. His 60-year-old wife, after working for years as a waitress, has had knee surgery and other problems. Each major treatment racks up thousands of dollars in bills they struggle for months to pay. Example 2: a 62-year-old woman working as a low-wage independent contractor. She is uninsured and has painful arthritis. She frequently cancels jobs because she is sick. Example 3: a construction worker also in his 60s with a high insurance deductible. He rarely goes…

It is a cruel farce. Scammers use the names of federal agencies charged with protecting citizens’ financial security to rip them off. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has confirmed the existence of a new scam in which someone purporting to be from the agency contacts individuals and tells them they are eligible for a payout in a class-action lawsuit. On one condition: to collect the money, the scammer says the taxes owed must be paid upfront. This is known as an imposter scam. Imposter scams involving other federal agencies – the IRS or the Social Security Administration – are common. The CFPB imposter scam sounds vaguely credible since the story the victim is told is similar to the agency’s…

Older Americans’ share of the labor force has doubled since the early 1990s, and they constitute roughly one in four workers today. But their dominance is mainly an artifact of the baby boomers’ demographic bulge moving through the labor force and says little about how employers view the growing ranks of aging workers. Employers’ willingness to hire or retain older workers, especially when someone younger is available, is an important issue for a couple related reasons. Boomers are under increasing pressure to work as long as possible to improve their finances before retiring. It’s also easier for many to work well into their 60s since people are living longer and technological advances have reduced the physical requirements for some types…

U.S. industries have become increasingly concentrated in the 21st century, leaving fewer employers in local labor markets. This is not good for workers. The simplest example is a town with one company in the business of producing widgets. The company has little competition when hiring widget workers and can pay them lower wages. A new study finds that the increase in employer concentration – one or a few firms that dominate locally – has played a role in the 20-year decline in labor force participation in the United States. When workers have fewer employment options and wages are lower, looking for and finding a job is a more difficult, less fruitful pursuit. Some give up and drop out of t…

Alrededor del 14 por ciento de trabajadores y trabajadoras aquí hablan español. El Seguro Social tiene un sitio web para usted. Translation: About 14 percent of the working-age population here speaks Spanish. Social Security has a website for you. It’s critical that workers who speak only Spanish or are more comfortable with the language have a clear understanding of how Social Security benefits work. It’s estimated that Americans 65 and over receive just under a third of their income from the benefits, and lower-income people rely on it for much more than that. Social Security’s Spanish-language website, which has been around in some form since the mid-1990s, provides general information about the program and also addresses issues especially relevant to…

This year, retirees were jolted by the 14.5 percent hike in Medicare’s Part B premium for medical services. It was the second-largest percentage increase in at least 20 years. The monthly premium, which rose to $170, will drop to $165 in 2023. But medical care is an expensive proposition that consumes a big chunk of many retirees’ income from Social Security, 401(k)s, and other sources. According to a new analysis of 2018 health care data, typical retirees had 88 percent of their total income left to buy everything else after paying for medical care. And one in 10 retirees with inordinately large health care costs had 63 percent or less left over for living expenses, said Melissa McInerney, Matthew Rutledge, and Sara…

To paraphrase a U.S. senator in 1977, the moral test of government is how it treats the sick, the poor, and its children. That rings especially true during an historic public health emergency like COVID. Congress came through with financial relief to blunt the pandemic’s impact, and the money that flowed through the economy provided more Americans with health insurance, while also reducing poverty. Several newly released U.S. Census reports “show how much vigorous policies can do to prevent poverty and preserve access to health care,” the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concluded. The Uninsured. During the pandemic, the share of all adults lacking health insurance declined from 9.2% in 2019 to 8.6% in 2021, reversing the trend of…

San Francisco is caught in the vortex of two powerful forces: a fast-growing retiree population and rising rents. Residents over 60 are expected to make up a fourth of the city’s residents by 2030, according to this video project for The San Francisco Standard by Chris Chang, a student in the University of California, Berkeley’s graduate journalism school. And San Francisco rents, after collapsing during the pandemic as people left the city, are on the rise again. A one-bedroom apartment is going for $3,100 per month – second only to New York City – despite a rent control policy that limits annual rent increases. A San Francisco retiree with an unusually onerous rent burden is Shao Yan-Zhen, whom Chang interviewed…

The transition to retirement can take many paths. A couple years ago, Joelle Abramowitz at the University of Michigan described three groups of self-employed workers over 50. The bulk of them work independently, either as independent contractors or doing odd jobs, and are more often minorities, with very low pay and few employee benefits. Think Uber driver. The other two groups are business managers and business owners, who are predominantly white, male and in good financial shape. In a follow-up to her earlier research, Abramowitz dug into 24 years of data to understand the self-employed older workers’ attitudes toward work and the transition to retirement. She found a heterogeneous group with a range of views about whether they are transitioning…

Retirees who postpone collecting Social Security from age 62 to 66 – the full retirement age for most baby boomers – get around a third more in their monthly checks. Delaying to 70 increases it even more. There’s one problem with this strategy. Many people want to retire well before they turn 66. But there is an alternative for people with 401(k) savings: retire but don’t sign up for Social Security and withdraw an amount from the 401(k) equivalent to the Social Security check. Then delay Social Security for a few years. The start date will, of course, depend on how much money is in savings and how much of it the retiree can spend comfortably. In a recent experiment,…

People with disabilities have high rates of food insecurity because they earn less or can’t work at all. Add to that their unusually large expenses for health care and assistive equipment like wheelchairs and special computers. But the roots of food insecurity run deeper than just the financial constraints. Even middle-income people with disabilities are more food insecure, which the USDA defines as either deficiencies in nutrition or not having enough to eat. Part of the problem is where they tend to live, according to a new Urban Institute study. Counties with unusually large disability populations have fewer places to shop for groceries and an oversupply of fast food restaurants, convenience stores, and small grocery stores with limited shelf spac…