Older women in the workforce are disproportionately working in low-paying jobs, and are even more at risk financially due to other circumstances—a lack of power and the absence of a savings cushion.
So says a report from the New School's Retirement Equity Lab, which finds that despite a reported low unemployment rate among workers 55 and older—just 3.1 percent—the "good news" hides the bad news.
That is, not only are low-paying jobs prevalent among older workers, to the exclusion of better-paying jobs, but that women are the ones mostly stuck in these low-paying positions—48 percent of older women lacking a college degree, compared with 29 percent of men in similar circumstances.
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These lower-paying jobs offer workers less than $15 per hour, and it shows in the average earnings rates: while older women without a college degree earn a median hourly wage of $15.50, similarly situated men make a median hourly wage of $18.75.
You might think that education alone explains the low rate of pay, but you would be mistaken, according to the report. Older working women with college degrees are twice as likely as college-educated men to be in low-paying jobs (22 percent, compared with 11 percent).
One reason older women work for low wages is that they lack bargaining power, the report says. Age discrimination is worse for older women than for older men, resulting in lower pay.
The absence of a financial cushion to fall back on—39 percent of older women have no retirement savings at all—means they pretty much take what they can get, even if that job comes with poor working conditions and low pay.
The report cites Jessica Bruder's book Nomadland, in which she describes a group of people, "mostly women, living in RVs and chasing seasonal work."
One woman she discusses is Linda, of whom Bruder writes, "Her options for work would dwindle with age, rather than broadening to reflect her years of experience. There seemed to be no way off the treadmill of low-wage jobs. How would she ever afford to stop working?" Many of her subjects lost their jobs and savings in the Great Recession of 2007–2009.
A solution offered by the report is for Congress to raise the minimum wage—not likely in the present atmosphere—and also to put in place guaranteed retirement accounts (GRAs) that provide retirement savings accounts to all workers as a supplement to an expanded Social Security program.
The GRA's $600 refundable tax credit and employer contribution, the report says, ensure that even low-paid workers, a majority of whom are women, can afford to save for retirement. It too is unlikely to become reality any time soon.
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