Seniors and the Job Market

The job market isn't what it used to be. There have been times in the past when jobs were scarce, but nowadays jobs are scarce again and even scarcer are decent paying jobs. By 'decent paying jobs', I mean jobs that pay a sustainable wage. Minimum wages are not sustainable wages in most areas. Many urban areas have taken to requiring some kind of 'living wage' - the minimum hourly wage necessary for a person to achieve a specific standard of living in that area based on that area's market.

In many cases, these living wage requirements have been established by the local or state governments. Since wages are a growing expense for most business large and small, this creates a vicious cycle where payroll expenses will grow due to living wage requirements, but the business will get no extra value for paying that out and that can drive a company out of business. Only larger mega corporations can sustain such requirements without making cutbacks somewhere else. All this adds up to creating a tighter job market than there ever has been in U.S. history.

For seniors trying to re-enter the job market after retirement or even for older workers trying to obtain a decent paying jobs, there can be many additional challenges. First of all, there is the challenge of even finding a job. Older workers find their choices limited. For one thing, jobs that we could do in our younger days that require some sort of physical activity may be out of the question now. Also we find ourselves discriminated against in the job market. Age discrimination is illegal in the United States, but unfortunately it's widely practiced in a covert manner and it's difficult to prove. For many employers, seniors represent a liability because of health issues due to aging.

So where does that leave today's senior citizen or someone approaching their senior years? It's these very trends that caused me to look at building my own business and that is always my suggestion to other older people who are having trouble finding a job. Having a business is made much easier by the network marketing model and that is the type of business I usually recommend. It can let a senior work his or her own hours and take in supplemental income without slaving their senior years away at some grind job, punching the time clock.