Married with Unemployment

As a general rule, older workers tend to be married. But it is worthwhile to check out those statistics and think about what it all means for our recovery. According to a December 14, 2011 report from the Pew Research Center, not only are only 51% of Americans over 18 married (versus 72% in 1960) but they are older when they first marry and among the younger demographics, they mostly don’t get married at all: “In the United States, the [marriage rate] declines have occurred among all age groups, but are most dramatic among young adults. Today, just 20% of adults ages 18 to 29 are married, compared with 59% in 1960. Over the course of the past 50 years, the median age at first marriage has risen by about six years for both men and women.”

Does this represent an erosion of family cohesion? And what does the economy have to do with it? Since it costs the average family $300,000 to raise a child, with later marriages and harsh economic times, according to another Pew study, U.S. birth rates have fallen since 2007 such that Americans are now having children at an average of 1.9 births per woman, below the replacement rate. Thus, without immigration, if these trends continue, the United States can expect a contracting population with a concomitant impact on our economic growth.

The Department of Labor has another take on the impact of the economy on unemployment, summarized nicely in this chart appearing in Money.CNN.com (August 15^th).

The results seem obvious: “Single men and women lost about 5 million jobs during the financial crisis, and have since gained back 90% of them, according to the Labor Department. That's not too shabby, especially considering the jobs recovery has been so slow. But married people, who make up a slightly larger part of the adult population, lost even more jobs and have gained far fewer back. Of the 6 million jobs they lost, they've recouped only about 22%.” CNN.com.

Economists don’t sense any pattern of discrimination against married workers, but the fact that displaced older workers, those more like to be married, tell the story of out-dated skills, the impact on upgrading skills while unemployed, industrial obsolescence and the forced reduction of higher-paying jobs often relegated to those with the most seniority. What does an older worker do when competing with those earlier (and cheaper) in their careers with technological and social networking skills at the most current levels? The more startling truth is that most of these older breadwinners are unlikely to find anything like the salary levels and skill-set demands that they experienced before the fall. The good news is that for those marrieds who have jobs, the biggest cuts appear to have already been implemented, and the general unemployment rate remains lower for married workers as a whole.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the recovery is looking so much more like a permanent downward“reset” of the American economy.