ORLANDO, Fla. — Marcus Wells and Shirley Walker view their economic prospects from opposite ends of the age spectrum.
Wells, 25, was initially optimistic about his prospects for finding a new job after he was laid off as a systems analyst in January in San Jose, Calif. Now unemployment has begun to wear on the him, and he believes his age has factored into his frustration.
“More experienced people are getting hired, and they’re downgrading their skills to get the job,” Wells said. “I feel like I’m competing with older workers, not college graduates. It wears on your confidence.”
Walker, 58, lost her job running a nonprofit which helped minority women in business in Orlando and hasn’t had any luck finding new work in the three months since.
“What they tell us is that they’re looking for more mature and experienced workers, but they want us to work for less, or what they could pay younger people to do,” she said recently outside an Orlando job fair. “Maybe younger people would be willing or able to accept lesser pay.”
Would-be retirees have watched their savings dwindle and health care costs soar, while workers recently out of school and burdened by debt try to advance in careers that no longer have room for them.
The results show up on the map: Places with high concentrations of people in their late 20s or nearing what they thought would be their retirement age are feeling the recession the hardest, as measured by The Associated Press Economic Stress Index. The index assigns each county a score from 1 to 100, with higher numbers reflecting greater stress, based on its unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcy rates.
California’s Santa Clara County, where Wells lives, registered 14.42 on the stress index through June, while Walker’s Orange County, Fla., came in at 15.69, both well above the average county’s 10.6.
The groups associated with the highest stress scores in each U.S. county are men and women between ages 25 and 29 and women over age 55. That doesn’t necessarily mean having a high percentage of people in those groups causes a county’s economic health to worsen, though the two appear to go hand in hand.
Experts said a variety of factors may be at play.
Young adults are more at risk for losing their jobs and homes in a recession, while people later in life are more likely to declare bankruptcy in order to protect their assets, said Tay McNamara, director of research at the Center on Aging and Work at Boston College.
“Last hired, first fired. Generally, that is very true,” McNamara said.
Though younger people may be more likely to be laid off, older workers are less likely to recover from a layoff, experts said. Part of the reason stems from the myths surrounding older workers — that they’re tough to train, more expensive and not comfortable with new technology, said Joseph Quinn, a professor of economics at Boston College.
“Once they do get laid off, they’re really hosed,” Quinn said.
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