CRISIS OF CARING
Older health workers struggle in low-paying jobs
One part of New York’s late-middle-aged population is struggling financially to the point where many workers need public assistance to survive.
The city is exploding with lowpaid home health and personal care aides as its elderly population grows. A surprising proportion of these workers are age 55 and older.
“Many of us in this industry have to depend on public assistance because of the low pay, lack of benefits and because many employers are cutting back on hours and overtime,” said Rosanna Guzman, a middle-aged Manhattan resident who works near her home as a home care worker, earning around the minimum wage. “It is also stressful,” she added. “We are often required by the client to perform jobs we were not originally hired to do.”
Guzman, who has seen her working hours swing from 40 hours to 24 hours weekly, said she sees few career opportunities outside of her present backbreaking work. She said she suffers severe pain as a result of a client kicking her. “Things will have to change,” she told The Post.
Despite the city’s historically low unemployment rate of 4.1 percent, these older workers are emerging as the city’s newest underclass, analysts say.
“They are working really long hours, sometimes for low pay — as low as $7 or $8 hourly — and if that exaggerates the pay just a little bit, it is certainly no exaggeration to say these older workers earn less than $25,000 a year,” said Maritza SilvaFarrell, executive director at labor rights group ALIGN. “This is not a salary you can live on in New York City,” she added.
Under pressure from labor rights activists, New York City officials this year have investigated home care agencies on suspicion of widespread labor law violations. The New York City Department of Consumer Affairs recently announced thousands of dollars in restitution and fines.
New York City has added 202,000 health care aide workers in the past decade, and the working sector will surge even more, as the city’s senior population could hit 1.4 million by 2040 — a never-before-seen level in New York’s history, according to demographers.
A new study confirms that older workers are serving even older Americans.
It’s one of the biggest economic nuts for President Trump to crack — the acceleration in low-wage employment since 2008, when the US economy cratered and eventually recovered at the expense of millions of middle-class jobs.
Older workers are feeling the brunt of lost retirement funds and the low-wage jobs boom.
“Most of the job growth for older workers is in unstable or low-paid jobs, including jobs in the home health and personal care aid sectors,” according to the study led by Teresa Ghilarducci at the New School.