Economic Fears Make Retirement a Dream Deferred

“Employment is always slow to catch up with what is happening when we come out of the recession,” said John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray and Christmas, a Chicago-based outplacement firm. However, Challenger notes that in the current recession “there really seem to be many, many people over the age of 50 who are stuck right now in the category of ‘long-term unemployed’—without work for more than 27 weeks. They really are struggling to find their way back into work right now, and the jobs just don’t seem to be there.”

Despite the gloom surrounding the job market, Teising isn’t giving up hope. “The market is not to going to recover and make up for the 30 percent we lost,” he said. “So I’m still determined to keep looking.”

Michael Zielenziger writes about the economy for Bulletin Today. He lives in the San Francisco Bay area.