Government Executive - Authors - Richard Florida

Baby Boomers Were Job-Hopping Before It Was Cool

Richard Florida, CityLab — Fri, 03 Apr 2015 09:00:00 -0400

If you haven't already bid farewell to the concept of the “company man,” you definitely missed your chance.

A new study from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the already aged concept of a "good job for life" went away long before the rise of the “job-hopping Millennial” (or Gen-X-er, for that matter). In fact, workers who hold multiple jobs in one lifetime became normal as early as the mid-1970s, with the Baby Boom generation. The BLS finds that the average American born between 1957 and 1964—the latter years of the baby boom—held nearly a dozen (11.7) jobs between the ages of 18 and 48. Job security hasn’t been a guarantee for at least the past 40 years.

The BLS data draws from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 , an ongoing survey that first interviewed nearly 10,000 men and women between the ages of 14 and 22 in 1979. During the latest round of interviews, in 2012 and 2013, the respondents were between 47 and 56. Interviews queried the respondents on a number of issues, including work experiences, educational attainment, income, and health. The report notes that it considers the responses of these survey participants to be “representative of all men and women born in the late 1950s and early 1960s and living in the United States when the survey began in 1979.”

The chart below, from the report, shows the average young-boomer’s job trajectory between 18 and 48. The curve climbs steeply in the first six or so years of their careers, between 18 and 24, when the average respondent had 5.5 jobs. The duration of each job lengthened as the boomers got older, which makes sense—it tends to take longer to move up the job ladder the closer one gets to the top. The average boomer held three jobs between 25 and 29, 2.4 between 30 to 34, 2.1 between 35 to 39, and 2.4 in the eight-year span between 40 and 48.

(Bureau of Labor Statistics)

The report also breaks down the later boomers’ career trajectories by gender, education level, and race. Women held slightly fewer jobs than men overall—11.5 on average between 18 and 48, compared to 11.8 for men. Interestingly enough, women with bachelor’s degrees were more likely to job-hop than their similarly educated male peers: They held an average 12.5 jobs between 18 and 48, compared to 11.2 for men. Men without high school diplomas, meanwhile, changed jobs the most, an average 12.9 times, compared to only 9.6 times for high school graduate women.

Job mobility also differed by race, but only among the young. Between 18 and 24, the study found that white boomers changed jobs more often (5.7 times) than blacks or Hispanics (4.6 and 4.9 times, respectively). But from 25 to 48, the difference evened out, and whites were not significantly more likely to change jobs than blacks or Hispanics.

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For all the talk of Millennials’ excessive job-hopping ways, it seems the precedent was set long ago—by their parents. But there’s an important difference between the economy these later boomers faced and the one with which their children are now grappling. According to the report, the hourly earnings of boomers increased more rapidly while they were young. Between 18 and 24, these workers saw their earnings jump by an average 6.2 percent per year. Those with bachelor’s degrees saw even greater yearly jumps, by 9.4 percent annually between 18 and 24. Predictably, those earnings increases slowed down as boomers got older, with earnings growth rates decreasing from an average 4.1 percent annually between 25 and 29 to just 0.7 percent between 40 and 48. The bulk of boomers’ wage growth, then, happened when they were young.

This would seem to reinforce the idea that the Great Recession permanently damaged the earning potential of young people today. A 2013 Urban Institute report shows that the average wealth of those between 20 and 30 in 2010 was 7 percent lower than the average wealth of boomers in their 20s and 30s in 1983. This is particularly troubling given the pattern for boomers, who saw substantial earning gains in the early years of their careers.

Even as more jobs become available and Millennials’ careers pick up steam with the economic recovery, young people who came of working age during the years of the Great Recession are likely to see permanent damage to their lifetime earnings. This is bad news for them, but it’s also bad news for the entire national economy.

( Image via jan kranendonk / Shutterstock.com )

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Are Baby Boomers Really Keeping Millennials From Finding Jobs?

Richard Florida, CityLab — Thu, 19 Jun 2014 13:00:00 -0400

The millennial generation is the largest in American history, and they’ve begun to enter the workforce. But more and more, these young workers are stuck in low-end, low-pay, and even part-time jobs for which they are overqualified—something that a recent NBER working paper has found could depress their future earnings for years. These days, there are simply not enough good jobs to go around.

One big reason for this is that many baby boomers, also hit hard by the economic crisis, are putting off retirement and staying in their jobs longer. Theaverage retirement age is now 62—five years older than it was two decades ago. The end result is that the labor market overhang of boomers has essentially prevented millennials from finding the sort of good jobs that are so important at the start of their careers.

A new analysis by the labor market data and research firm EMSI and CareerBuilder tracks how the job market has changed for these two cohorts—young workers 22-34, and pre-retirement workers aged 55 to 64—since the crisis, from 2007 to 2013.

The news is troubling. Even as their population numbers have swelled, the number of younger workers has remained stable since 2007, while the number of pre-retirement workers has grown 9 percent over the same time.

In part, this latter fact is a product of America’s changing demographics. There are more 55 to 64 year olds than there were seven years ago, so more of them are in the workforce. The population above 55 has grown 20 percent since 2007. But there are also more 22 to 34 year olds—a demographic category that grew at a slower but still substantial 5 percent—yet their numbers in the workforce have remained stable. Some of these may have had trouble finding work, while others may have returned to school in order to gain competitive skills and wait out a sluggish job market. Clearly, those trying to break in have lost out over the course of the Great Recession.

The Truth About D.C.'s Growing Knowledge-Based Economy

Richard Florida, CityLab — Thu, 31 Oct 2013 14:52:00 -0400

Washington, D.C., has always been known as a city of power. But beyond politics and diplomacy, it is now the center of a big, dynamic, successful and diverse economy, one that is quickly becoming an important player on the global stage. As I wrote in last month in The Atlantic, Washington’s economy has "clearly prospered from federal spending; lobbying and government contracts are significant sources of its wealth. But its economy is not entirely or even predominantly parasitic." The D.C. metro area has in fact developed a diversified tech and knowledge economy. The Washington Post’s Jonathan O’Connell picked up on this earlier this month, noting in jest, "It’s not just cupcakes anymore." Urbanist Aaron Renn has put it this way: "We’re witnessing the start of Washington’s emergence as America’s new Second City."

But to what degree has government activity shaped the region's economy in both direct and indirect ways?

To get at this, I asked the labor market data and research firm EMSI to run the most current numbers on the region’s job growth for the period 2009 to 2013. We did this both by industry (referring to sector of employment, such as federal government, the finance and insurance industry, or the health and education sectors) and by occupation (tracking the different jobs individuals perform, regardless of the industry in which they are employed, such as manager, software engineer, or designer). EMSI also undertook a detailed analysis of both the direct and indirect effect of government activity on the region's job picture.

The bottom line: Greater D.C. has evolved into a leading-edge knowledge economy, where private sector knowledge, professional, and creative jobs outnumber direct government jobs. But government remains the central pivot point of the region's knowledge economy, stimulating a wide range of direct and indirect spinoff jobs.

In Search of the Entrepreneurial Personalities of Specific Places

Richard Florida, CityLab — Thu, 30 May 2013 11:35:09 -0400

As I've noted many times before, entrepreneurship is a key driver of innovation and economic growth. But we also know that entrepreneurship is spiky — not everyone becomes an entrepreneur, and not all places foster this kind of growth.

Economists, mayors, and economic development officials as well as venture capitalists, technologists, and business leaders have long sought to track the key characteristics of successful entrepreneurs, who are at the core of game-changing companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook. These same groups of people have also been working to identify the factors that drive the success of certain entrepreneurial regions, such as Silicon Valley.

While we know that the Steve Jobs of the world have distinctive psychological traits and personality profiles, most coverage of the factors behind places with strong entrepreneurial ecosystems focuses on economic factors, such as the presence of venture capital, research universities like Stanford in Silicon Valley or MIT in Cambridge and Boston, plus other successful companies that breed entrepreneurs. We've also found a connection between metros that have high levels of entrepreneurship and concentrations of the creative class.

Read more at Atlantic Cities.

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Americans trust local governments, even as faith in Washington crumbles

Richard Florida, CityLab — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 09:54:07 -0400

Americans' faith in the feds is fading, but trust in state and local government is rising substantially.

According to survey results released Wednesday by the Gallup organization, roughly two-thirds of Americans express a fair or great deal of trust in state government and even more — almost three-quarters — trust local government.

Gallup notes: "Trust in state government has now essentially returned to levels seen before the financial crisis, after falling to as low as 51 percent in 2009."

Read the rest at The Atlantic Cities.

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Americans trust local government more than Washington

Richard Florida, CityLab — Wed, 09 May 2012 15:59:29 -0400

With partisan gridlock and congressional dysfunction, Americans may have lost faith in their federal government, but an overwhelming majority view state and local government favorably. More than 6 in 10 Americans hold favorable views of state and local government, while just 33 percent view the federal government favorably – down from 64 percent a decade ago.

A recent survey from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that these favorable sentiments toward local government have held relatively steady since 2002, dropping from 67 percent to 61 percent in 2012. That's compared with favorable views of the federal government, which have plummeted from 64 percent 10 years ago to just 33 percent today.

Read the full story at Atlantic Cities.

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