EDITORIAL JUNE 17, 2005

FortyPlusNY talks Employment.
Research: "America has 147,000,000 workers."

There are roughly 300,000,000 Americans...give or take a few million illegals.

In that large population, what actually IS the current employment situation? The published numbers make us wonder about how accurate they are.
We know those figures omit fairly large groups of potential workers: those who are "involuntary part timers" and those who have simply "dropped out."

There is a sizeable "grey market" of people working off the books...we just don’t know how large that group is. Additionally, 2,000,000 Americans are in jail. Workers who are handicapped, ill or chronically unable to work, have soared from 1.6 million to 5 million.

Let’s focus on what appear to be fairly factual numbers:

147,000,000 total workers..."employed and unemployed."

Since the boom years of the 1990’s, with "23,000,000 new jobs created," unemployment has been at a historic low levels. In the 1970s, economists agreed that 7% was an "acceptable" systemic level of unemployment.

Currently, unemployment...despite the anomolies and the slow recovery post 9-11, hovers in the 5% range. Roughly 500,000 workers are now on the unemployment rolls...eager and willing to go back to work.

HAS THE WORKPLACE CHANGED?

Economists tell us that workers now spend MORE time on the job.
This trend began in the 1950s and continues today. So much for the
mythical and never achieved Leisure Society.

Self-employed has risen sharply; to 9,200,000 (2003)...and now accounts for 6.6% of total employment. Many people would like to take this step, to independence, and they are brimming with confidence that this will turn out to be a successful way around the problem of financial success.

Unfortunately, the failure rate of small businesses is very high;
some say as high as 90% within 5 years.

Most troubling for FortyPlusNY is the fact that for male workers,
"prime years" - defined as being between 25 to 54 (as if reaching 55
suddenly makes a worker post-prime?)...represents a gradually declining
share of workers.

While it seems the Jack Welch "Winners" mentality is rampant in HR departments, at the insistence of CEOs (which periodically forces 10%
of the workers out of their jobs)...and the Youth Culture is endemic...it is
also quite possible to say that actually Little Has Changed since 1939.

Young workers are cheap and eager; older workers often appear to have
"lost a step," are less resilient, may lack new skills (Tech-related in the
current era), and they are absolutely more expensive.

"Wage compression" is very real. Meanwhile... income disparity is causing the highest earners to earn even more, at the expense of rank and file workers. The result is an increasingly unequal job market.

Add to that the overlay of steadily rising Healthcare costs, and there are
very real (and new) pressures on Forty Plus workers.

How can FortyPlusNY turn these Lemons into Lemonade?

Attitude is everything. With the right attitude, we can step back and
evaluate our situation, get over our depression, get control of our finances, reinvent ourselves, and move forward.

77,000,000 Boomers are just hitting the edge of the "55 year old Problem"
(no longer included in the ‘Prime Years’ cohort, FortyPlus NY could not be
MORE PERFECTLY POSITIONED.

The Boomers will need to reinvent themselves, possibly several times during their careers. They will need to learn new skills, new technologies, new ways to cope with everything from Kids in the Corner office to their personal finances (to bridge over gaps in employement). As the old Chinese proverb goes: "Change equals Opportunity."

In Classic Marketing Terms, FortyPlusNY is in exactly the Right Place
at exactly the Right Time. It’s what we do about it that will make the difference, to ourselves and to our New and Current members.

Richard Calderhead FortyPlusNY/June 16, 2005