This is the
first of an occasional series of blogs about Joblinks’s strategies and resources which
can be helpful in providing solutions that connect mature and older workers to
their workplace and their community.
Job Access Mobility Institute
The Community
Transportation Association of America's Joblinks Employment TransportationCenter is looking to support five communities in designing new and improved
on-the-ground transportation services that respond to a key transportation
challenge facing job seekers, trainees, and employees in their locale. The Job
Access Mobility Institute is a multi-month, team-based research, design, and
implementation process in which teams will develop and test a transportation
service that solves a key challenge of their constituents. This opportunity
will bring together innovative thinkers from the transportation, employment and
training, and business sectors to solve their community's unique mobility
challenges.
Application deadline: Friday, August 24, 2012
Application deadline: Friday, August 24, 2012
Some basic facts:
·
“Three-quarters of eligible adults 62+ postponed
Social Security in 2011.” (Fact of the Week, 04/14/12 The Sloan Center on Aging
and Work, www.bc.edu/research/agingandwork.)
Mature workers (persons 50+) are a steadily increasing part of the workforce as
fewer and fewer persons expect to retire at age 65. People are living are living longer; they lack
guaranteed benefit pensions; and they are working to rebuild savings lost as a
result of the economic downturn in 2008 will continue to work as long as their
health allows.
·
The June
2012 unemployment rate dipped slightly, but “nearly 2 million people aged 55 or older were still unemployed. (The Employment Situation, June 2012: “Dip
in Unemployment Rate for Those Aged 55+, but Other Indicators Remain Little
Changed” by Sara E. Rix, AARP Public Policy Institute, www.aarp.org/ppi)
·
Older unemployed workers tend to be unemployed
longer than their younger counterparts
o
“More than half” of the two million unemployed 55+
persons were “long-term unemployed;” that is, they [more than 1 million older persons] have been looking for work for six
months or more, many for even longer.” Id.
o
The average period of unemployment for older
workers is one year; and this figure remains
“stubbornly high.” The long-term unemployed are at risk of skills erosion….Many
of these jobseekers may withdraw from the
labor force without ever becoming reemployed.” (emphasis
added) (The Employment Situation, March
2012: by Sara E. Rix, AARP Public Policy Institute, www.aarp.org/ppi) NOTE: The monthly Employment
Situation Reports by Sara Rix are an excellent concise resource for further
information and analysis.)
·
An increasing number of retirees are continuing
to work part time. The Sloan Center on Aging and Work reported that “Almost
half of adults aged 65-69 received wages, salaries, or income from
self-employment.” (Fact of the Week, 04/3012, www.bc.edu/research/agingandwork)
·
This long-term trend has been accentuated by the
economic downturn. Sometimes these are “encore careers” – well-off/financially
secure retirees using their skills and experience to pursue personal interests.
Unfortunately, most are persons who need to work longer to finance their later
years of retirement. “In June [2012], nearly 1.3 million older nonagricultural
workers were working part time because they had no choice.” (AARP, The Employment Situation, June 2012)
Joblinks, CTAA’s
Employment Transportation Center
This information is derived from Joblinks’s website, www.ctaa.org/joblinks. Joblinks’s
mission is to offer “transportation strategies and resources [which] provide
the workplace solutions needed to connect workers with their communities.”
Joblinks Publications
and Tools
One of its core activities is to provide publications and
tools for enhancing transportation solutions. Some examples of recent materials
of particular interest to mature and older workers are:
·
One
Call-One Click Transportation Services Toolkit
One Call-One Click centers
provide centralized number that consumers can use to obtain information about
numerous transportation options available within a community. This Toolkit
provides communities interested in working together-whether locally, regionally
or statewide-the information needed to develop a one-call or one-click service
center for transportation assistance. www.onecalltoolkit.org
·
Virtual
Presentations
Archived presentations from Joblinks-sponsored national and
regional conferences and webinars, featuring speakers from the business world,
workforce development, transportation, and other sectors. http://web1.ctaa.org/webmodules/webarticles/anmviewer.asp?a=2593&z=103
Examples of these video
presentations that are especially helpful for persons working with mature and
older workers are: Vanpooling,
Carpooling, and Other Ridesharing Strategies; Connecting with Transit; Technology: Tools and Strategies; and Funding
Strategies.
Sector-Based Transportation
Strategies
Joblinks recently developed a series of briefs addressing
sector-based transportation strategies that are especially relevant and timely
for mature and older workers. What are Sector-Based Strategies? Sector-based
strategies focus on specific industries such as health care, manufacturing, and
hotel and other service industry jobs as a way to help low-wage earners and job
seekers improve their short- and long-term employment opportunities.” www.ctaa.org/joblinks, Innovations tab at the top of the front
page, then Sector Strategies tab.
Many unemployed mature workers have held responsible jobs,
and the focus of the sector-based approach on training for jobs within a
specific industry with a chance for advancement
is particularly appealing. In many local communities, broad partnerships of
community organizations involved in promoting sector-based opportunities, often
find that lack of transportation is a barrier to accessing employment or
training opportunities in these fields. These briefs include specific examples
of business and community transportation responses designed to address the
access needs particular to that sector.
All are relevant to mature and older worker issues, but these four are
especially significant:
Connecting Retail Workers with Jobs,
Connecting Health Care Workers to Jobs and Training Opportunities,
Another brief, Home Health and Personal Care
Workers, has a double significance because many home health aides and
personal assistants are older workers; and many of the persons they help are
older too.
View these briefs and review additional information about
sector-based transportation strategies by visiting www.ctaa.org/joblinks and clicking on the Innovations tab.
How to contact
Joblinks? For names and contact
information of staff, visit www.ctaa.org/joblinks
and then click About tab at the top
of the front page.
