Almost A Third Of Americans Are Working Beyond Age 65

There is a huge disparity in employment rates among over 65s across different countries...

You will find more statistics at Statista

As Statista"s Niall McCarthy notes, a recent OECD report found that the highest rates of people working beyond 65 are in Asia with Indonesia particularly notable as having a 50.6 percent employment among those in the 65-69 age group. That figure is high elsewhere in Asia, standing at 45 percent in South Korea and 42.8 percent in Japan.

In contrast to Europe where there were widespread protests when the retirement age was raised even slightly, much of Asia has actually been supportive of increases in the mandatory retirement age. Reasons for support include everything from a desire to maintaing a fit and active life to more obvious concerns about finances.

New Zealand has no compulsory retirement age and it is another country with a high employment rate among older people with 42.6 percent of those aged 65 to 69 still working. The rate is far less in Australia at 25.9 percent while it"s 31 percent in the United States.

In Europe where all those protests happened, the rate is lower still. In the United Kingdom, the employment rate for 65-69 year olds stands at 21 percent while in France and Spain, it is only 6.3 and 5.3 percent respectively.

"It's Unfair" - Hispanic Workers Upset After Being Fired For Absence On "Day Without Immigrants"

The manager of the ironically named "I Don"t Care" Bar and Grill in Catoosa, Oklahoma is hiring...

After firing 12 staff last week for violating his “no call/no show” policy.

Fox Baltimore reports that the workers are without a job after getting fired for skipping work as a show of support for “A Day Without Immigrants.”

The restaurant workers are all Hispanic and say it was important to them to participate in the national protest.

But they didn’t think it would cost them their jobs.

“They feel like they’ve been unfairly terminated," said a friend, translating for the employees.

The owner fired them by text message.

A message to one of the employees reads: "You and your family are fired. I hope you enjoyed your day off, and you can enjoy many more. Love you.”

What this text means for former employees at a restaurant in #Catoosa coming up at 6 on @KTULNews pic.twitter.com/WaMLt9znAA

— Ethan Hutchins (@ehutchinsnews) February 17, 2017

The group willingly chose to stay home with others across the country, supporting “A Day Without Immigrants.”

“(They’re) upset they stood for something they felt was necessary so the community would stand together, and they got terminated for that," said the friend.

Restaurant owner Bill McNally gave us a written statement, saying he has a "zero tolerance policy for no show/no call incidents and the 12 employees violated that policy."

Job Openings, Hires, Quits And Layoffs All Rebounded In November

While too backward looking to be actionable (it reflects the labor situation with a 2 month delay), today"s JOLTs report showed little in terms of changes for "Janet Yellen"s favorite labor market indicator": the number of job openings was little changed at 5.522 million, below the 5.555 million expectation, but above a downward revised 5.451 million (from 5.534 million). 

Hires and separations were also little changed at 5.219 million (up from 5.160 million), and 5.028 million (up from 4.966 million), respectively. Within separations, the quits rate was unchanged at 2.1 percent and the layoffs and discharges rate was unchanged at 1.1%. That said, the pace of hiring appears to have tapered off, after hitting cycle highs in February 2016 at 5.5 million, and remaining at levels largely unchanged over the past 2 years.

As shown in the next chart, while the trailing pace of job additions has been modestly declining in the past two years, net hiring also appears to have plateaued.

Meanwhile, discharges and other layoffs jumped by 68,000 in November rising to 1.637 million after hitting cycle lows of 1.513 million in September.

The offsetting good news, however, is that being "quits", or the so-called take this job and shove it indicator, also rose, increasing by 41,000 to 3.064 million, just shy of the all time high reported last December when a total of 3.088 million workers quits their jobs on their own terms.