Behavior

May 3, 2022

The twin goals of prescribing opioids to workers with a bad back or arthritis are to alleviate their pain and keep them employed.

But the use and abuse of opioids can cause poor memory, extreme drowsiness, and an inability to engage in normal social interactions – all of which limit workers’ ability to function. Opioids also have serious physical effects outside of the dependence itself.

The resulting detachment from the labor market, revealed in a new research study, calls into question any benefits the medications have.

Between 2012 and 2018, average employment declined by nearly 2 percent for every 10 additional opioid prescriptions per 100 adults in a county-sized area, the researchers found. Wages also dropped by 6 percent, indicating that the opioid users who do remain employed are less productive.

The painkillers had more permanent consequences, too, when workers, unable to cope, left the labor market for good. The rate of applications for federal disability benefits increased sharply in the areas with higher prescribing rates, according to the study funded by the U. S. Social Security Administration, which runs the disability program. …Learn More

Behavior

January 20, 2022

Howard Gantman didn’t exactly have a plan for retirement. Rather, he wandered into it during the early months of COVID chaos.

Nevertheless, retirement is going better than he’d expected. Gantman, who read comic books and science fiction voraciously as a child, has rediscovered his passion. He joined a writing group on Zoom and is working on a science fiction novel of his own. (And no, he’s not disclosing the plot yet.)

“I’m happier doing this than I would’ve been if I’d continued to work. I really was ready for a change,” the Washington, D.C., resident said in a recent interview. “Aside from a gruesome virus that keeps on whacking us on the head, I feel more in control of my life.”

Retirement experts often warn baby boomers that planning for lifestyle changes before retiring is just as important as making certain one’s finances are in order. That’s the ideal. But not everyone who’s making the transition has a well-developed plan or takes a straight route to where they wind up.

Gantman, a former journalist and government and communications professional, had anticipated working until he was about 72. In March 2019, at age 67, he left his job at the Motion Picture Association during a staffing transition and started focusing on consulting and volunteer work while searching for a new job. In December, he had to go into the hospital for surgery to repair an aortic aneurysm and replace an aortic valve.

After the surgery, while he was recovering and doing some light consulting, COVID hit and his employment opportunities dried up.

He decided to get back into creative writing, something he had only dabbled in as a young, workaholic journalist and then government official. At first, he blogged about aging and thought about writing a memoir centered on his late-life transition. But that topic no longer seemed to strike the right tone with so many lives suddenly in turmoil around COVID.

That’s when his love of science fiction and fantasy pulled him back in. “I decided that’s it. That’s what I want to do,” he said about writing a novel. …Learn More

Money Culture

January 21, 2021

The COVID-19 economy is really a tale of two worlds.

The stock market and housing market have largely shrugged off the economic slowdown. But severe financial problems are brewing for millions of workers who have lost their jobs or are earning less in a lackluster economy.

The assistance passed by Congress will certainly help. Still, half of all workers reported in a Transamerica Institute survey late last year that they are experiencing at least one employment disruption, whether a layoff, reduced work hours, shrinking paychecks and commissions, or an early retirement. A crisis also looms for thousands of renters if the Centers for Disease Control allows its eviction moratorium to expire at the end of this month.

Paying taxes is another big worry. When the pandemic struck and unemployment spiked last spring, the IRS postponed the deadline for filing federal taxes by three months, to July 15.

COVID-19 hasn’t gone away – and neither has concern about paying taxes. More than half of taxpayers said they might have to borrow money to pay their 2020 taxes this April, according to a LendEdu survey last month.

Other aspects of Americans’ financial problems were captured in two more surveys about the pandemic’s impact:

The Millennials who are still saddled with student loans have struggled for years to pay their other living expenses. The COVID-19 relief bill gave them a respite by suspending their monthly payments for most of 2020, and the U.S. Department of Education extended that at least through January. But one financial problem has been replaced by others for the young adults who are unemployed or earning less.

About one in five people in their late 20s and 30s reported in a 2020 survey by Georgetown University’s business school that the pandemic forced them to take a variety of stopgap financial measures. These have included dipping into retirement funds, delaying or reducing credit card payments, and getting food and rental assistance from non-profits. …Learn More

October 8, 2020

Sales and rentals of recreational vehicles have skyrocketed during the pandemic as people working remotely use their newfound freedom to move their workplaces to the great outdoors.

Outdoorsy – the Airbnb of recreational vehicles (RVs) – reports that 40 percent of its new rental customers are under age 40. But long before younger adults hit the road, thousands of baby boomers were buying RVs to roam the country in search of work.

Rather than seeking psychological relief from COVID, as younger workers are doing, the boomers – some retired and some unemployed – are looking for financial security.

In this excellent PBS NewsHour segment, Paul Solman talked to boomers who park their RVs at campsites near whatever seasonal jobs they can find at places like Amazon and JCPenney warehouses, sugar beet farms, and theme parks and national parks.

During the summer tourist season, Judy Arnold has been working at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. But with so many businesses shut down by the pandemic, she worries about where her next job will come from. “I definitely need an income,” she told the NewHour.

George Stoutenburgh gave two reasons for his wanderlust. …Learn More

July 9, 2020

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 national printing company for three decades – until his 2016 layoff. Through sheer determination, he found a full-time job packing and delivering printed materials to customers for a print shop in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. But his income dropped sharply.

“It’s frustrating that, in my mind, somebody who has done the things you were told as a kid you need to do – stay at a job, work, learn, be helpful, get promotions – and then you find yourself, at this point, that your career doesn’t mean [anything],” Crist said in the pre-pandemic video.

“You just do whatever you have to do to keep everything else afloat,” he said.

With the country now in a recession, I checked in with Crist to see how he’s doing. His financial situation deteriorated further after Pennsylvania shut down the economy to contain the virus. He briefly lost his three jobs – at the printing company and two part-time jobs, at a local brewery and a workout gym.

He was relieved when the printer brought him back in April from a three-week furlough after the company received a stimulus loan under the federal Paycheck Protection Program. But business is slow, and Crist worries he might lose the job again. “Knowing that you’re almost 60 years old,” he asked, “now what do you do?”

The gym is also reopening, but it’s unclear how much he can work since he used to be on the night shift and the gym will no longer be open 24 hours a day. He also returned to the brewery to handle takeout orders but it, like many eating establishments, is struggling to make it at a time of social distancing.

Prior to the pandemic, Crist had already gone through many of the financial struggles boomers are facing today. With his wife unable to work, he said he depleted his 401(k) after his 2016 layoff.  He was having difficulty keeping up his mortgage payments and paying part of his daughter’s college loans, and now it’s even harder.

He said he can’t imagine being able to retire. “I’ll be working and paying for stuff until I can’t.”Learn More

Money Culture

May 5, 2020

The majority of Americans who have health insurance – some 150 million workers – get their coverage through their employers. But this network has suddenly developed a big hole in the midst of a pandemic.

The economic shutdown that is suppressing the coronavirus has thrown nearly 30 million people out of work – and taken away their health insurance. Millions more are expected to be laid off.

About 10 percent of the U.S. population did not have health insurance in 2018, Kaiser’s most recent estimate. This share will certainly increase sharply, but how high it goes and how quickly the situation will improve is hard to predict, given all the uncertainties, said Jennifer Tolbert, director of state health reform for the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) does provide options that were unavailable to people who lost their jobs during the 2008-2009 recession. Even so, “there are still so many ways that people can lose insurance,” Tolbert said.

The coronavirus “highlights the still-existing gaps in our healthcare system and coverage,” she said.

Under the ACA, the newly unemployed potentially have two options: purchasing private policies on the state insurance exchanges or enrolling in the Medicaid program for poor and very low-income people.

Medicaid enrollment is available year-round for the newly unemployed and for low-paid workers whose hours have been cut, causing them to lose the insurance they had when they were full-time. But this program is not an option for thousands of laid-off workers in 14 states, including Florida and Texas. They will slip through the cracks, because their states have declined the ACA option to extend their programs to cover more residents.

Medicaid historically has provided health insurance for low-income parents with dependent children. Under the ACA, most states did expand their programs and now include adults who do not have children. The ACA also expanded coverage by increasing the income ceiling for Medicaid eligibility to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. …Learn More