Squared Away Blog

Like much in life under a pandemic, the research presentations for the Retirement and Disability Research Consortium’s annual meeting are going virtual. This year’s online meeting will also be scaled down from the traditional two days to one: Thursday, Aug. 6. The purpose of the meeting, which is usually held in Washington, D.C., is for academics from universities and think tanks to describe their latest research to colleagues, policy experts, financial professionals, and the press. Topics this year will include taxes in retirement, federal disability insurance, housing, health, and labor markets. The U.S. Social Security Administration has funded the research and is sponsoring the meeting. The agenda and information about registration are available online, and participants can register anytime. Questions…

People with intellectual disabilities, autism, or schizophrenia have high rates of unemployment. But a new study finds that some can find part-time or even full-time jobs with the help of coaches funded by the government. Having a coach doesn’t guarantee that a person with a disability will get a job. But in a 2019 study, the people who received this support “were significantly more likely to become employed” than those who did not get the help, according to researchers for the Retirement and Disability Research Consortium. To get and keep these jobs requires a lot of personal attention. The federal-state Vocational Rehabilitation program provides coaches – often at non-profits – who find the right jobs for their clients and then…

Americans’ retirement outlook has gone from bleak to bleaker. The unemployment caused by COVID-19 has pushed up the share of working-age households not able to afford their current standard of living in retirement from 50 percent to 55 percent, according to a new analysis by the Center for Retirement Research, which sponsors this blog. The analysis updates a previous estimate, based on 2016 data, to include the harmful effects of surging unemployment. The researchers estimate that perhaps 30 percent of workers – far more than is reflected in the monthly jobless rate – could be affected by layoffs now and in the future. They did not factor in the recession’s impact on the housing and financial markets, which could mak…

The Black Lives Matter protesters have brought renewed attention to the enduring economic inequality that separates Black and white America. Homeownership is at the heart of this disparity. For many Americans, their largest source of wealth is the value they have built up in their homes over time. The house is also traditionally the primary way for moderate- and middle-income parents to pass wealth on to their children. But less than half of African-Americans own homes, and the ones who do have a fraction of the equity whites have due in large part to the nation’s long history of segregated housing, economists say. Further, the tidal wave of foreclosures a decade ago reduced the already low homeownership in minority communities,…

During the steel and coal busts of the 1980s, applications for federal disability benefits rose in areas where these industries had laid off workers. Now there’s a 21st century reason to apply: student loans. College debt is extremely difficult to discharge in the bankruptcy courts. But the U.S. Department of Education in 2013 opened a new avenue for potentially eliminating federal student loan debt. Former college students whose disabilities are severe enough to qualify them for disability benefits can then apply to the Department of Education for loan forgiveness. Since 2015, the typical person approved for the program has eliminated $17,500 in college loans. The prospect of discharging the onerous debt created a powerful financial incentive. After the program began,…

 The unemployment rate has rocketed to double digits. But older workers’ struggles in the job market are not new. An Urban Institute study, reported here, estimated that about half of workers over age 50 left a job involuntarily at some point between 1992 and 2016 – a period that included strong economic growth and two recessions. After the workers found new employment, their households were earning just over half of what they earned in their previous jobs, researcher Richard Johnson told PBS’ NewsHour. The baby boomers being laid off now might relate to Jaye Crist, who was featured in this NewsHour video last February when unemployment was still at record lows. He had been a manager at a nationa…

Workers at construction sites or in warehouses can feel their bodies breaking down over time. This could be the natural aging process, or it could have to do with their overly strenuous jobs. It’s not easy to tease apart the effects of each. But consider two groups of workers with back and spine stiffness or deformities employed in a variety of occupations. One group has had the back problems since they were children or teenagers, while the other group’s disability began as adults. Given that they all have a similar disability, it might seem that both groups would also have similar physical demands at work. But that isn’t the case. A recent study found that the workers who developed back…

The COVID-19 recession has changed everything. This extreme disruption in our lives is always top of mind, which was reflected in our most widely read articles so far this year, based on the blog’s traffic. Baby boomers, their retirement plans having been deeply affected by the Great Recession, are once again reassessing their finances. One popular article explained that the boomers who were in their early to late 50s during the previous recession lost about 3 percent of their total wealth at the time. This put their retirement planning at a distinct disadvantage compared with earlier generations in their 50s, whose wealth, rather than shrinking, grew 3 percent to 8 percent. The current recession is the second major setback in…

In anticipation of rambunctious children returning to the classroom in the fall, older teachers are sounding alarms about how challenging it will be to make the schools safe for themselves, as well as the children and families. Their fears about going back to work in a pandemic are shared by older workers around the country with chronic conditions, which increase the mortality rate for people who contract COVID-19. More than half of U.S. workers who are between ages 55 and 64 are in jobs that can’t be done remotely, a new study estimates. Their flexibility to work at home isn’t much different than younger adults. But older Americans who are weighing whether to return to work face a dilemma that…

As laid-off baby boomers venture into the job market in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, they may sense it will be tough to find a position because, well, they’re too old. New research indicates this suspicion is spot-on. Discrimination is notoriously difficult to corroborate in academic studies. But researchers in Belgium, using a well-designed experiment conducted prior to the pandemic, found that company hiring managers working in 30 developed countries, including the United States, were much less likely to ask older job applicants to even come in for an interview. The reason? They were perceived as having “lower technological skill, flexibility, and trainability levels,” the study concluded. But there’s a big disconnect between this evidence of discrimination and a…

Anyone who’s suffered through depression knows it can be difficult to get out of bed, much less find the energy to go to work. Mental illness has been on the rise, and depression and myriad other symptoms get in the way of being a productive employee. So it’s not surprising that men and women with mental illness are much less likely to be employed than people who have no symptoms. But the problem gets worse in a recession. In 2008, the first year of the Great Recession, the economy slowed sharply as 2.6 million workers lost their jobs. During that time, people who suffered from mental illness left the labor force at a much faster pace than everyone else, according…

Several young adults in my life have been derailed by the COVID-19 recession. A few examples. My daughter-in-law just finished her graduate degree in occupational therapy and sailed through her certification only to be met by a stalled job market. A friend’s daughter, fresh out of nursing school, has already been turned down for one job. My nephew, a late bloomer who had finally snared a job making jewelry for a major retailer, was laid off and is floundering again. Student loans, the Great Recession, and now a pandemic – Millennials can’t seem to catch a break. Going into this pandemic, people in their 20s and 30s already had lower wages, more student debt, and less wealth than previous generations…