America and post-employment.

[Cutlass]

Sorry but I do not get it, Texas is a conservative state and conservatives say they prefer to have small government, so will this not do what they want ?

Or is it a case of conservatives saying their government jobs should be safe at any cost ?

American conservatives have never been for small government, no matter what they claim.

 

[mangxema]

Umm, I don't know whether that is true or not, but I do know that 50% of the federal workforce is pretty close to if not already eligible to retire.

Let's see. Boomers born say 1950. Yup, 2010, they're sixty. Average retirement age is 62 in the US.

So the average worker can be expected to be retiring in a few years. See, statistics are your friend

In my office, I was told that about a third of the people could retire today, but haven't; a third aren't eligible yet, but will be within a few years; and a third that is basically everyone else. The fact that there were times when they couldn't hire has lent itself to population bubbles, of which I am the start of one. (Yay?)

--

Also, regarding the OP: I've been wondering how much women staying in the workforce has changed things. I've always fancied myself as fair-minded sort of person, but I think that the fact that more women are staying in the workforce could be a problem. It seems (although I was certainly not around at the time) like things were simpler before in that unemployment figures were roughly the amount of households with no income coming in. So if you have 10% unemployment, then about a tenth of your people have nothing coming in. That's a lot. Now, though, who knows what that means? Some families have two incomes, some one, some none. And there are benefits to having both parents work, so in my experience at least, both parents try to make some money when they can. That's fine if there are enough jobs out there, but I don't think there's enough to support that trend alone, not to mention on top of normal population growth.

My point is not that the ladies should just shut up and get back in the kitchen, just that it seems like the old ways worked in their own way to limit the workforce and I think we're going to have to somehow emulate that or we might find ourselves in trouble. No idea how...

(End midnight musings)

 

[Arwon]

Meh, before women were in the workforce, there was a lot less wealth and income around because half the population wasn't doing anything productive or value-adding. One of the reasons places like Sweden are quite rich is that a lot of women work and have done for a long time - that makes for a higher GDP per capita.

 

[Bast]

Are we taking into account the ageing population? What's going to happen when all the baby boomers retire? The oldest baby boomers are still 64-65. That means there's going to be a heck of a lot of people retiring in the next decade or so.

 

[civ_king]

Within 20 years nearly all boomers will have retired

 

[mangxema]

Meh, before women were in the workforce, there was a lot less wealth and income around because half the population wasn't doing anything productive or value-adding. One of the reasons places like Sweden are quite rich is that a lot of women work and have done for a long time - that makes for a higher GDP per capita.

Yeah, I know. I kind of alluded to that though perhaps not very well. The only way that works though is if there are actually enough jobs to go around.

 

[Kerozine]

*Disparaging comments withheld.*