Workforce Issues & Employee Benefits

These days many Americans, whether political or not, are tuned into discussions about social insurance programs. Retirees and younger generations, alike, are questioning whether Social Security benefits will be ample enough to carry them through their retirement years. Despite solvency for the next two decades, a number of options are being explored to ensure Social Security benefits are available for generations to come. Potential solutions range from those that cut benefits for the long-term to those that increase federal revenues to maintain or boost retiree benefits. A consideration that regularly discussed is the full retirement age and how it relates to the average life expectancy of Americans.

Before attending the National Academy of Social Insurance's 25th annual policy conference, Medicare and Social Security in a Time of Budget Austerity, I had very little knowledge of the details of the Social Security system. Throughout the conference, I couldn't help but think that the U.S. education system failed me by not preparing me for how to save for retirement.

Two presentations struck me at in particular:

This Thanksgiving, Americans across the country can be thankful for four critical programs that helped keep nearly 26 million people out of poverty in 2011, including three social insurance programs: Social Security, unemployment insurance (UI), and workers' compensation, and a related program, Supplemental Security Income (SSI).

Today marks the release of new data from the Census Bureau on Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2011. Some key points from the report are:

Three years into a very modest recovery, unemployed workers continue to experience hardship and are facing cuts to emergency unemployment insurance benefits.

June 2009 marked both the official end of the Great Recession and the beginning of the current recovery, which has been plagued by high unemployment rates, historic long-term unemployment, and sluggish job growth. The national unemployment rate in June 2012 was 8.2%, 3.2 percentage points higher than at the start of the recession in December 2007, and the employment situation in most states is still bleak. If we consider a broader unemployment measure that includes workers who have given up searching for work and those who are underemployed (employed but not working as many hours as they would like), the unemployment rate is much higher -- 14.6%.