retirement age

Bucks Blog: A Social Security Site for Smartphone Users

May 13, 2013 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Courtesy Social Security Administration

The Social Security Administration is now offering a version of its Web site that is designed specifically for smartphones.

But wait. Most of those who are interested in Social Security are older Americans who may not be technology-savvy smartphone users, right?

Not necessarily, the agency says. About 35 million page views of Social Security Web pages each year, out of roughly 540 million total, come via smartphones — just over 6 percent.

The agency cannot determine whether those visitors to its Web site — either the previous version or the new mobile version — are receiving benefits or not, an agency spokesman, Mark Hinkle, said in an e-mail. But visitors probably include younger recipients receiving disability or survivor benefits, as well as older people nearing retirement age, he said.

Working Americans can go online, using a “mySocialSecurity” account, to check the accuracy of their earnings information, on which future benefits are based. (Bucks has written previously about these accounts).

Now, smartphone users can gain access to much of the information available on the main Web site via the new mobile site, which makes it easier to view the information. Anyone using a smartphone to go to socialsecurity.gov will be automatically directed to the mobile site.

“With significant budget cuts of nearly a billion dollars each year over the last few years, we must continue to leverage technology and find more innovative ways to meet the evolving needs of the American public without compromising service,” said Carolyn W. Colvin, acting commissioner of Social Security, in a prepared statement about the mobile site.

Mr. Hinkle said the agency aimed to include content that would most likely be of value to mobile users, and tested the mobile site with agency employees, advocates and members of the public.

I took a quick look at the site Monday morning on my iPhone (the site also works for Android, Blackberry and Windows devices).

The mobile site does allow access to an account to check benefits, or creates an account if you do not have one already. But that function does not seem to be fully optimized, saying that it is “best viewed on a desktop.” I logged onto my account anyway, and was able to see my estimated monthly retirement benefit and my last reported earnings information. The type can be made bigger so it is easier to see, but that requires scrolling around a bit more to see all the information on the page.

There is information about obtaining a replacement Social Security card, frequently asked questions and a tool for locating Social Security offices.

There is also a feature that prospective parents can have fun with: a list of the top baby names, compiled annually by the agency. (No. 1 for boys in 2012 was Jacob; for girls, Sophia, as a colleague on the Economix blog has noted.)

Take a look at the mobile site and let us know what you think in the comments section. Is it helpful?

Article source: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/a-social-security-site-for-smartphone-users/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Your Money Tagged With: billion dollars, million page views, retirement age

Americans Closest to Retirement Were Hardest Hit by Recession

February 2, 2013 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

In the current listless economy, every generation has a claim to having been most injured. But the Labor Department’s latest jobs snapshot and other recent data reports present a strong case for crowning baby boomers as the greatest victims of the recession and its grim aftermath.

These Americans in their 50s and early 60s — those near retirement age who do not yet have access to Medicare and Social Security — have lost the most earnings power of any age group, with their household incomes 10 percent below what they made when the recovery began three years ago, according to Sentier Research, a data analysis company.

Their retirement savings and home values fell sharply at the worst possible time: just before they needed to cash out. They are supporting both aged parents and unemployed young-adult children, earning them the inauspicious nickname “Generation Squeeze.”

New research suggests that they may die sooner, because their health, income security and mental well-being were battered by recession at a crucial time in their lives. A recent study by economists at Wellesley College found that people who lost their jobs in the few years before becoming eligible for Social Security lost up to three years from their life expectancy, largely because they no longer had access to affordable health care.

“If I break my wrist, I lose my house,” said Susan Zimmerman, 62, a freelance writer in Cleveland, of the distress that a medical emergency would wreak upon her finances and her quality of life. None of the three part-time jobs she has cobbled together pay benefits, and she says she is counting the days until she becomes eligible for Medicare.

In the meantime, Ms. Zimmerman has fashioned her own regimen of home remedies — including eating blue cheese instead of taking penicillin and consuming plenty of orange juice, red wine, coffee and whatever else the latest longevity studies recommend — to maintain her health, which she must do if she wants to continue paying the bills.

“I will probably be working until I’m 100,” she said.

As common as that sentiment is, the job market has been especially unkind to older workers.

Unemployment rates for Americans nearing retirement are far lower than those for young people, who are recently out of school, with fewer skills and a shorter work history. But once out of a job, older workers have a much harder time finding another one. Over the last year, the average duration of unemployment for older people was 53 weeks, compared with 19 weeks for teenagers, according to the Labor Department’s jobs report released on Friday.

The lengthy process is partly because older workers are more likely to have been laid off from industries that are downsizing, like manufacturing. Compared with the rest of the population, older people are also more likely to own their own homes and be less mobile than renters, who can move to new job markets.

Older workers are more likely to have a disability of some sort, perhaps limiting the range of jobs that offer realistic choices. They may also be less inclined, at least initially, to take jobs that pay far less than their old positions.

Displaced boomers also believe they are victims of age discrimination, because employers can easily find a young, energetic worker who will accept lower pay and who can potentially stick around for decades rather than a few years.

“When you’re older, they just see gray hair and they write you off,” said Arynita Armstrong, 60, of Willis, Tex. She has been looking for work for five years since losing her job at a mortgage company. “They’re afraid to hire you, because they think you’re a health risk. You know, you might make their premiums go up. They think it’ll cost more money to invest in training you than it’s worth it because you might retire in five years.

“Not that they say any of this to your face,” she added.

When older workers do find re-employment, the compensation is usually not up to the level of their previous jobs, according to data from the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.

In a survey by the center of older workers who were laid off during the recession, just one in six had found another job, and half of that group had accepted pay cuts. Fourteen percent of the re-employed said the pay in their new job was less than half what they earned in their previous job.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/business/americans-closest-to-retirement-were-hardest-hit-by-recession.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: home values, retirement age, young adult

Economix Blog: Older, but Not Yet Retired

January 24, 2013 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

CATHERINE RAMPELL

Dollars to doughnuts.

The labor force participation rate has fallen drastically in the last few years, partly because a huge chunk of the American population — the baby boomers — is rolling into retirement age. But the aging of Americans born from 1946 to 1964 has not actually had as big a drag on labor-force participation rates as demographers might have guessed a few decades ago.

That’s because it has become much more common for people over 65 to continue working.

According to a new Census Bureau report, in 2010, 16.1 percent of the population 65 years and older was in the labor force, meaning either working or actively looking for work. Two decades earlier, that share was 12.1 percent.

The increased labor-force participation rate for the most senior Americans is partly tied to more women joining the work force over time, though men have shown large increases too:

Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

Within the 65-and-over population, those from 65 to 69 had the biggest bump in labor-force participation. Across both genders in this narrower age range, the rate increased to 30.8 percent in 2010 from 21.8 percent in 1990, a 9 percentage point increase. (Interestingly, the share of people from 16 to 64 who were in the labor force moved in the opposite direction during that time, falling to 74 percent in 2010 from 75.6 percent in 1990.)

People may be working longer because they are in better health in their late 60s and expect to live longer than their counterparts a couple of decades earlier. But they may also have greater financial responsibilities today than in the past.

In 2011, of workers who said they would be delaying their retirement, 13 percent explained that they had “inadequate finances or can’t afford to retire” and 6 percent gave the reason of “needing to make up for losses in the stock market,” according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. The share of people who said they were having to retire later than expected has also been much higher in the last few years than it was when the economy was good.

Source: Employee Benefit Research Institute.

To put all these numbers in context, it’s worth remembering that labor-force participation rates for people over 65 used to be much higher in the late 1940s and 1950s:

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Additionally, people over 65 in the United States are far more likely to be in the labor force than people in most other developed countries, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development:

Source: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Article source: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/24/older-but-not-yet-retired/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: american population, drag on, retirement age

Bucks Blog: Jobs That You Can Do Forever

November 15, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

In the Your Money special section that we published in print on Wednesday, our theme was “Bulletproofing Your Finances.” One way to make sure you never run out of money is to have a job that you can continue to do until your dying day.

There are plenty of stockbrokers, accountants and lawyers who work well into their 70s or 80s, but if you lack the training to do that kind of work it’s hard to switch into it once you’re past the traditional retirement age. So we looked for positions that seemed to have a growing number of (much) older workers, and that’s when we found out about all of the work in casinos for the older set.

Could you do what you do all day at the age of 80? If not, have you looked at your retirement savings trajectory, found it wanting and considered switching into a career where you could work well past the age of 65?

Article source: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/jobs-that-you-can-do-forever/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Your Money Tagged With: dying day, jobs, retirement age

Italy Passes $40 Billion Austerity Plan

December 22, 2011 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Although it has a parliamentary majority, the month-old technocratic government of Prime Minister Mario Monti called a confidence vote on the measures to avoid having to address scores of modifications proposed by the Northern League, once a pillar of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right coalition and now the loudest opposition party.

The measures — which have grown increasingly unpopular as the reality sets in for Italians — reinstate a property tax on first homes, among other tax increases; raise the retirement age to 66 for men and 62 for women by 2012; and raise the ceiling for cash transactions to $1,300, among other measures to crack down on tax evasion.

The government has said that it tried to spread the pain among all segments of society and not just hit what many call “the usual suspects” — taxpaying salaried employees who often take the brunt of tax increases because tax evasion among non-salaried workers is so high.

Mr. Monti — a former European commissioner and university president who must work with a Parliament whose largest bloc, the center-right, is eager for early elections to solidify its political standing — has said that the bywords of his government are “equity,” “rigor” and “growth.”

To stimulate growth — which remained flat at 0.3 percent in Italy over the past decade — the measures also provide tax incentives for businesses that hire women and people under 35 on permanent contracts. Business groups have called for even more sweeteners to prevent the economy from contracting further.

In a speech just before the vote, Mr. Monti underlined the need to orient European economic policies more toward growth, rather than just concentrating on fiscal discipline. Calling the measures a “proof of collective discipline,” Mr. Monti said that the package enabled Italy to hold its head high as it faces the undeniably serious European crisis.

Although Mr. Monti still enjoys broad political and popular support, the measures have become increasingly unpopular in a growing climate of economic uncertainty, in a country that is already in recession, and where salaries have remained flat in recent years while the cost of living has risen.

“I know that we all have to cooperate and that the measures were needed, but my feeling is that they always turn to the same people, like pensioners or those with low salaries,” said Maurizio Capecci, an unemployed 57-year-old who sells lottery tickets during the Christmas season in downtown Rome. “I think the government should have introduced a wealth tax. Why can’t those who have more give more, but for real?”

A strike called by labor unions shut down national transportation last week and more strikes are anticipated in the coming months to protest changes in pension rules and labor contracts.

Mr. Monti’s government has said that it is planning to tackle labor reform — long a third rail in Italian politics — in the new year.

Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/23/world/europe/italy-passes-40-billion-austerity-plan.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: business groups, mario monti, retirement age

Emergency Decree Implements More Cuts in Italy

December 5, 2011 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

The measures are meant to slash the cost of government, combat tax evasion and step up economic growth, so the country can eliminate its budget deficit by 2013. Mr. Monti took the steps in an emergency decree, which means they will take effect before he presents them to Parliament for formal approval.

Delivered ahead of a crucial summit meeting of European leaders this week, the new measures are aimed at showing that Italy — which is seen as both too big to fail and too big to bail out should it default on its immense debts — is committed to getting its finances in order.

The hope is that they will take some of the market pressure off Italy, whose borrowing costs have been pushed up in recent weeks to levels that have led other European countries to seek bailouts; once Italy has shown it is committed to austerity, the European Union can move ahead with broader plans to shore up the euro.

“If you want, call these the ‘Save Italy’ measures,” Mr. Monti said in a news conference after a cabinet meeting on Sunday, less than three weeks after taking office. “I wanted to give you a message of grave concern but also of great hope,” he told Italians, adding that he would work to spread the sacrifices with “equity” across the society.

A former European commissioner with no experience in the trenches of the Italian Parliament, Mr. Monti is expected to present the measures to both houses on Monday. Though the Parliament voted confidence in his government of technocrats by a wide margin last month, many legislators are reluctant to push through measures that might hinder their chances for re-election.

There are other hurdles as well. Labor unions are opposed to raising the retirement age, and industrialists say the measures are weighted too heavily toward tax increases that could stifle growth.

Mr. Monti, who is both prime minister and finance minister, faces the challenge of satisfying the demands of European leaders while making clear to Italians that they must take responsibility for solving the country’s longstanding structural problems.

“The huge public debt of Italy isn’t the fault of Europe; it’s the fault of Italians, because in the past we didn’t pay enough attention to the well-being of the young and the future adults of Italy,” Mr. Monti said. Speaking of his proposals, he said, “We have had to share the sacrifices, but we have made great efforts to share them fairly.”

Among the new measures announced Sunday are sharp cuts to regional governments that could significantly change Italian politics by crimping the flow of patronage spending.

There appears to be little room now for traditional Italian political maneuvering. Though Italy’s economy is the third-largest in the euro zone, it has no forward momentum; economists expect it to contract in 2012 and stay flat in 2013. Meanwhile, the cost of servicing the country’s debts is claiming an ever larger share of its budget.

Mr. Monti must also convince risk-averse Italians that there is much at stake. Silvio Berlusconi, who was prime minister until a few weeks ago, repeatedly told his countrymen that the economy was fine, even though youth unemployment was high and rising, growth was flat and prices were outstripping wages.

“You will never hear me ask for a sacrifice because Europe asks for it, just as you will never hear me blame Europe for things that we should do and that are unpopular,” Mr. Monti said. “I would rather be considered unpopular, rather than Europe, because you can do without me, but not without Europe.”

Mr. Monti’s proposals include reintroducing an unpopular property tax that Mr. Berlusconi abolished in 2008 to fulfill a campaign promise. The new measures would also prohibit cash transactions above 1,000 euros ($1,340), in the hope of making tax evasion harder; raise the country’s value-added tax by two points to 23 percent starting in September; and give incentives to businesses to hire new workers.

The country’s new welfare minister, Elsa Fornero, a pension expert, choked with emotion at the news conference as she explained how Italians would be asked to sacrifice today in order to make the pension system less “arbitrary” and “more equitable” for future generations.

The standard retirement age, now 60 for many women and 65 for most men, would quickly rise to 62 and 66, with incentives to keep working until age 70; the standard age for women would eventually rise to match that for men. Pensions would be based on the number of years of contributions, not on the worker’s salary at the time of retirement, as is common now.

Before the cabinet meeting, Emma Marcegaglia, the president of the business organization Confindustria, called the austerity measures “heavy but indispensable,” adding that “the next 10 days will decide whether the euro will survive or not.”

But Ms. Marcegaglia added that her group had asked the government to recalibrate the mixture of tax increases and spending cuts once the measures have been passed.

The leader of the center-left Democratic Party, which supports the Monti government, called for more measures to fight tax evasion, a very widespread problem in Italy.

Susanna Camusso, the president of CGIL, Italy’s largest labor union, said the austerity measures “deal a very harsh blow to the incomes of pensioners.” Raising the retirement age would be “unsustainable for so many workers who would see their retirement prospects shaken and delayed by many years of work.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=9685640bc33d70d60a7e3b73ce681cce

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: emergency decree, industrialists, retirement age

Austerity in Italy May Not End Its Jobs-for-Votes System

September 15, 2011 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

The auxiliaries, who earn a respectable 800 euros a month, or $1,100, to work 20 hours a week, are among about 64 Comitini residents employed by the town, the product of an entrenched jobs-for-votes system pervasive in Italian politics at all levels.

“Jobs like these have kept this city alive,” said Caterina Valenti, 41, an auxiliary in a neat blue uniform as she sat recently with two colleagues, all on duty, drinking coffee in the town’s bar on a hot afternoon. “You see, here we are at the bar, we support the economy this way.”

But what may be saving Comitini’s economy is precisely what is strangling Italy’s and other ailing economies throughout Europe. Public spending has driven up the public debt to 120 percent of gross domestic product, the highest percentage in the euro zone after Greece’s. In recent weeks, concerns about Italy’s solvency and the shaky finances of other deeply indebted European nations have sapped market confidence and spread fears about the stability of the euro itself.

On Wednesday, Italy’s lower house of Parliament gave final passage to a $74 billion austerity package aimed at eliminating Italy’s budget deficit by 2013. But analysts doubt that the measures — primarily tax increases but also cuts in aid to local governments, a higher retirement age for women in the private sector and a change in Italy’s labor law to make it easier for companies to hire and fire — will achieve the advertised savings.

Many of the cuts in financing for local governments may yet be bargained away in annual budget negotiations to be held this year, and nowhere in the legislation are there any measures to reduce the salaries or the number of public sector employees, more than 80 percent of whom have lifetime tenure. But they would lose some retirement benefits, and a hiring freeze is already in place.

Financial markets have remained edgy, with yields on Italian bonds rising to a record high of 5.7 percent at auction this week, before rallying a bit after the government passed a confidence vote on the austerity measures. Investors remain unconvinced, though, fearing a possible downgrading of Italy’s credit rating, which could further drag down the euro, and there is already talk of the government introducing additional austerity measures.

“I have great doubts about whether they’re sufficient,” Stefano Micossi, an economist and the director of Assonime, an Italian business research group, said of the austerity package. “The mechanisms that led to such spending haven’t changed.”

The sticking point, he added, was the public sector. “The big problem is the public administration,” he said. “It’s inefficient and corrupt. But corruption is born in politics and politicians don’t want to change.”

Italy is contending with a public debt, built up under a succession of Christian Democratic governments, that helped the country emerge from dire poverty after World War II to become Europe’s third-largest industrial economy.

Especially in the poorer Italian south, the Christian Democrats put millions of people on the state payroll in a jobs-for-votes system that many say has persisted under Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The quid pro quo worked so long as the economy was expanding, but now is seen as one of the major threats to Italy’s solvency.

In 2009, the most recent year for which data is available, an estimated 3.5 million Italians were on the state payroll out of a work force of 23 million, according to the Ministry for the Public Administration and Innovation. On Mr. Berlusconi’s watch, government expenditures — including the cost of public administration and defense — rose to more than $1 trillion in 2010 from $753 billion in 2000.

Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting from Rome.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/15/world/europe/italy-austerity-plan.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: house of parliament, retirement age, solvency

Italian Workers Strike Against Austerity Measures

September 6, 2011 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

The eight-hour strike shut down transport and businesses nationwide. It was called by the C.G.I.L. union, which represents 2 million public and private sector workers, in opposition to a 45.5 billion-euro austerity package of tax hikes and spending cuts proposed by the Italian government last month to reduce Italy’s budget deficit by 2013.

The measures were required by the European Central Bank in exchange for buying Italian debt to help keep the country’s borrowing costs from rising out of control. But the measures have come under near-daily revision, as Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi struggles to satisfy objections from within his governing coalition and from the center-left opposition.

The latest incarnation, which comes up for a vote in the Senate later this week, would change Italian labor law to permit Italian to bypass national labor contracts, making it easier to hire and fire workers.

In a statement on Tuesday, Mr. Berlusconi’s office said the bill would also raise VAT tax to 21 percent from 20 percent; adding an additional “solidarity tax” of 3 percent on Italians who earn more than 500,000 euros annually; and increasing the retirement age for women in the private sector starting in 2014.

The Northern League, the most powerful party in Mr. Berlusconi’s coalition, had been vehemently opposed to raising the retirement age for women, since in Italy public day care is scarce and grandmothers routinely serve as child care providers.

On Tuesday, the government said it planned to call a confidence vote on the measures in the Senate, where Mr. Berlusconi has a significant majority.

Addressing a crowd of an estimated 70,000 people in Rome on Tuesday, Susanna Camusso, the leader of C.G.I.L., called the change to the labor law “unjust” and threatened more strike actions if it weren’t removed.

“If Parliament doesn’t strike this from the bill, they have to know that we will use every path and initiative possible so that this shameful measure is removed,” she told an estimated 70,000 supporters outside the Colosseum on Tuesday.

Pierluigi Bersani, the leader of the center-left opposition, criticized the measures. “This package should be strengthened and made more equitable,” he said. “It’s useless to pass it quickly if it’s not done well. Otherwise we will end up having a new austerity package every week.”

After dropping a proposed 1.8 billion euros in cuts to regional governments, the new austerity bill proposes stepping up efforts to crack down on tax evasion, which Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti estimates will bring in billions in evaded taxes.

In recent days, Mr. Berlusconi has come under intense European pressure to pass the measures, which are seen as vital to the strength of the euro.

On Monday, Mario Draghi, the outgoing Bank of Italy president and incoming president of the European Central Bank, became the latest European leader to pressure Mr. Berlusconi to approve the measures swiftly.

He said that Italy should “not take it for granted” that the European Central Bank would continue buying Italian debt.

But the measures are not popular with many Italians, who are feeling increasingly squeezed. As he walked around Rome’s Piazza Navona, Pasquale Nappo, 47, a public employee in the Rome Province, wore a butcher’s apron covered in fake blood to protest what he called the “social butchery” of the austerity measures.

“The politicians don’t seem to understand and haven’t for years that they need to give people answers,” said Mr. Nappo, who said that three of his four children were unemployed. “They don’t understand that if I earn 1,300 euros a month, I can’t pay a rent of 1,200 euros, which is what it costs to live in Rome.”