What percent of your state's residents are in the work force?
Filed under: Retire, Career, Insurance-health
An undertow of the current health care debate has been the suspicion that working Americans will be forced to cover the cost of health care for deadbeats who decline to work and pay for their own. I thought it would be interesting to look, state by state, at just how many people 16 years of age or older are actually in the work force as defined by the census bureau, i.e., working outside of the home or actively looking.
This graphic, from the latest American Community Survey by Bureau of the Census, shows a large disparity from region to region.
Why are so many people older than 15 not in the work force today? According to a 2004 study (current unemployment will change these numbers temporarily) the main reasons are:
37.9% are retired
19.1% are going to school
14.7% suffer from chronic illness or disability
13.2% are taking care of children/others at home
4.3% are unable to find work
3.6% are uninterested in working
Certainly one can't include retirees, mothers, or the disabled in the class 'deadbeats'. The remaining categories aren't as large as I might have suspected. In fact, the largest factor, by a wide margin, is the number of retirees, most of which are already included in the Medicare system.
Comparing the above chart with one showing where people 65 and older continue to work explains a great deal of the differences state to state. If we need to increase the percentage of those eligible to work that are active in the work force, the low hanging fruit is the retiree.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9-30-2009 @ 4:02AM
Travis said...
I found a similar map for seniors to retire comfortably at http://governmentretirement.com
Reply
9-30-2009 @ 4:03AM
Tom Shaw said...
It would be interesting to also compare this map to legal status residents and imigrants in each state and the makeup of race in each state. Who is on welfare ans who works?
Reply
10-02-2009 @ 11:50AM
Sal Santoro said...
What are you people smoking?
If this is the best advice you can give...why not suggest that we work ...until we die and get it over with receiving our hard earned dollars that the politicians are squandering on prok belly projects.
Retire at 66 ???? SS will be so happy to give you about $1000 per month more than if you retire at 62.
It appears that whomever is providing this great advice has never learned anything about Math. I would be getting $1800 per month is retiring at 62. But because of your great advice I am going to retire at 66. That is $86,000 that those lousy politicians will not have to pay. It will take 86 months or 7.2 year just to get back the money that I could have collected if retiring at age 62. Not counting the more than $80000 of taxes I would be paying for working another 4 year. Getting up at 5 am and working for 8.10, 12 hours a day just to satisfy another greedy audience the industry maangers.
I will be 73 before I really satrt receiving any payback for all the money I have paid for over 45 years.
How long do you expect me to live to have a fair chance at collecting some of what you promised and foced me to pay about 45 years ago?
And what do you think I will do with that money when I can barely move or most likey I will be dead?
You are out of your ....birds... get a life... and stop this insanity.
you are so ignorant atht you still quote an 8% interest rate on any 401K or IRA ...where in hell have you been?
You laying bastard....you promised that 45 years ago on the IRA and forgot to mention that you had to risk all your savings to achieve that return rate. After Enron, Merrill Lynch, AEG, and all the lousy ghinee ponzi schemes you still quote 8% return rate.
Why dont you just tell all the baby-boomers that you were so stupid and could not foresee that they could all retire within one or two years of each other, and like good americans would gladly let this corrupt agency to continue on wasting our hard earned money.
After all it seems that all is needed is a president that says " You can do it" ....whatever in hell that means.
Sal Santoro
Reply
10-24-2009 @ 1:43PM
Karen said...
You are spot on.....more people need to wake up and understand the time value of money!!!!