and gimme your job........

Another reason why unemployment, consumer spending, housing, and the recovery of everything else will be verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrryyyyyyyy slow this recession around.
From today's WSJ


Older Work Force Has an Ugly Wrinkle


By LIAM DENNING
Summertime, and the living is easy…for many, too easy. This July was the worst on record for youth employment: Less than half of all 16- to 24-year-olds had a job, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Add in those who were looking for a job and the overall labor-force participation rate, at 60.5%, was also the worst for any July since 1948.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, more than 40% of over-55s have work or are looking for it, the highest share since JFK was in office.

The graying of America's work force is a fact of (longer) life. But it is amplified by changing work habits among different age groups.

In the last economic upswing, lasting six years starting in November 2001, a net 10.4 million jobs were created. Almost one in seven were for workers 55 or older. In the period since November 2007, when the latest recession began, 7.4 million jobs have disappeared. For over-55s, though, a net 1.8 million jobs have been added in that time.

This largely reflects the demographic bulge of baby boomers rolling through the population over the past decade. But it also speaks to more Americans putting off retirement. Having fallen steadily since the late 1960s, the labor-force participation rate among over-55s bottomed out in the mid-1990s at 29% and has risen since by 11 percentage points. For over-65s, the rate has gone from about 12% to 17% in that time.

There are many reasons more Americans are staying in the workplace. But two stock-market dropoffs and a housing meltdown in the space of a decade must loom large.

On the positive side, the declining share of manufacturing in the economic mix, and concomitant increases in services, should make it easier for many to continue working.

This will expand the work-force beyond what conventional models predict, says Charles Dumas of Lombard Street Research. He estimates the trend of putting off retirement could add an extra 0.3% to the labor force each year over the next few years. That doesn't sound like much. But overall growth in the U.S. population ages 15 to 64—the usual definition of "working age"—is projected by the World Bank to be just 0.6% per annum until 2015.

A growing labor force provides fuel for longer-term economic expansion. However, the downside is more competition for already scarce jobs. America's youth, suffering 26.1% unemployment, may find it even harder to get work. A looser labor market should mean continuing pressure on wages and unit labor costs. In the short run, that should help underpin corporate profits amid slack demand. The flip side, however, is that this is deflationary for demand, especially as older workers nearing or indeed past retirement age tend to save more of their income than younger workers who have cars and houses to buy.

Ultimately, the ripples could spread beyond America. Higher savings rates, Mr. Dumas says, should erode U.S. net imports. That is bad news for three countries facing their own population-aging issues and all dependent to some degree on sprightly demand from Americans for their exports: China, Japan and Germany.