Senior caregivers are in demand. Why? Because not only are we living longer lives but our social demographics have changed as our culture has advanced to give women more rights, beginning in the 1970’s. This means we are just now entering an era where in addition to the fact that the Baby Boomer generation has a lot of people, the rights of women have changed the fabric of families and made them often unavailable to provide caregiving. Technology has allowed us to stay in touch with family members from anywhere but we will always need a human caregiver to provide for the physical and emotional care. We will always need real live humans to perform caregiving. And we need to prepare to find more people to be trained to work as senior caregivers.
Did you know that prior to 1974 women in the U.S.A. could not get a credit card? They could not run the Boston Marathon until 1972. Prior to 1978 women could be fired just for being pregnant. The Equal Opportunity Act of 1974 gave women the right to apply for credit (and credit cards) and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 allowed women to keep their jobs while they were “expecting” a child.
Remember when nobody was pregnant, they were just “expecting”? I remember a family dinner one Sunday when my father mentioned a neighbor was “expecting” and my brother said “expecting what?”. Exactly. We can talk about it now. Our society’s culture continues to evolve and this fact leads to one of the largest reasons for the need for more professional senior caregivers. The large number of Baby Boomers (10,000 turn age 65 each day) and advances in medicine are just part of the reason we need more caregivers. We need to recognize these facts in order to attract more workers to the industry of senior care or we will be faced with a shortage of professional caregivers to work in our nursing homes, assisted living communities and for licensed senior home care agencies.
Caregiver job openings are a constant in metropolitan cities nationwide, as well as in rural communities. Senior care needs are emotional as well as physical. Aging can be a tough journey. Caregivers are needed to make living longer, while living safely, possible. Nurses and care managers are also needed to manage the care and coordinate with family members and medical professionals.
Retired seniors may also want to consider working part-time as a paid caregiver as more and more paid caregivers will be needed to keep up with the changes in America’s social demographics.
Americans are also marrying later in life as marriages have evolved to be less about economic necessities and more about a union of shared passions and shared incomes. This means adult children are also more likely to be able to assist with paying for senior care services, if required, in order to maintain quality care and limit family drama that can escalate with the stress of caregiving (no, the Kardashian’s are not the only family with interesting dynamics).
And this need is only going to continue to increase because of another factor: sandwich generation parents. Women are waiting until they are older to begin motherhood which means they are more likely to have young children or school age children to care for and are not available to care for their parents.
Caregiver jobs will continue to increase, based on these simple social demographic facts. This means that the generations following the Baby Boomer will also continue to need caregivers. Perhaps both college students and retirees will be recruited to work part-time as senior caregivers to assist us to keep up with the demand for trained nursing aides and professional home health aides to work as caregivers.
See below from our friends at Pew Research:
In the 1990’s
13% of newborns were to Teenager Mothers
10% of newborns were to Women Age 35+
41% of New Mothers had Some College Education
In 2008
9% of newborns were to Teenager Mothers
14% of newborns were to Women Age 35+
54% of New Mothers had Some College Education
This means we must recruit more caring individuals to be professional senior caregivers. The Caregiver Training University assists anyone to learn the basic caregiver training skills through an online caregiver training course. There are many techniques that can make caregiving a more enjoyable experience, from understanding how to safely transfer a senior from their bed to a chair to a toilet, for example, to learning activities that can be helpful for a senior experiencing memory loss.
We will always need senior caregivers, no matter how much technology advances. Senior caregivers may submit their job application on Caregiverlist to be considered by hiring companies in their area as senior care companies hire as many as 5 to 6 new caregivers each week, in order to keep up with demand.
And as today kick’s off baseball’s World Series, a salute to another thing that will never change – the sound of the “crack of the bat”! Good luck to the Kansas City Royal’s and New York Met’s.
