The senior population is booming. Caregiving is struggling to keep up
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In November 2022, Beth Pinsker’s 76-year-old mother started getting sick.
Ann Pinsker, an otherwise healthy woman, had chosen to have spine surgery to preserve her ability to walk after experiencing back problems. What Ann and Beth thought was a simple recovery led to complications and infections, resulting in Ann being sent to one assisted living facility after another while her daughter took care of her.
Finally, in July of the following year, Ann died.
“We thought he would get back up to speed after a few weeks of being in the hospital, going to rehab, and staying at home, but he had complications and things were a lot harder than he thought,” Beth Pinsker, a certified financial planner and financial planning columnist for MarketWatch, who wrote a book on caregiving, told CNBC.
This wasn’t Pinsker’s first visit to elder care. Five years before her mother’s death, she had been taking care of her father, and before that, her grandparents.
But through each of these processes, Pinsker said he noticed a significant shift in the aged care industry.
“From the level of care my grandparents received to the level of care my mother received, prices have skyrocketed and services have decreased,” she said.
At a time when the elderly population in the United States is growing rapidly and the workforce is struggling to keep up, this speaks to a larger trend across the industry.
Latest data US Census Bureau It found that the nation’s population of people aged 65 and over grew from 12.4% in 2004 to 18% in 2024, and older adults outnumbered children in 11 states in just three states in 2020.
With this population change have come other changes, including increased demand for care for older people.
Prices for elder care services are increasing faster than inflation prices, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In September, Consumer Price Index Prices for nursing homes and adult day services increased by more than 4% in the same period, while prices increased by 3% annually.
However, it is not possible for the workforce to keep up with this increase.
sue According to Harvard Public Health, there are projected to be 4.6 million unfinished jobs by 2032, and as the gap grows, so does the number of home care workers. And McKnight’s Senior Living, a trade publication that caters to senior care businesses, to create The workforce shortage for long-term care appears to be more severe in health care than any other industry, down more than 7% since 2020.
‘A critical workforce shortage’
According to experts, this shortage is primarily due to low wages, poor job quality and the difficulty of moving up the ranks.
“This is coming for us, and we’re going to have it create a tremendous need for long-term care,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Jonathan Gruber told CNBC.
Gruber said the country has entered a period of “peak demand” for aging baby boomers, creating a situation where rising demand and wages are not adequately matched, leading to a “critical labor shortage.”
On top of that, she said, jobs in nursing homes are often strenuous and vary in skills depending on each senior’s specific needs, leading nursing assistants to be employed in difficult jobs that require more training but often pay slightly more than a retail job.
According to the latest data from the BLS wage data As of May 2024, the average base salary for home health and personal care aides was $16.82 per hour, compared to $15.07 per hour for fast food and counter-counter workers.
“If we can create a better system of care where all kinds of care are given to those who need it, that will free millions of workers to grow our economy, so that is a barrier to economic growth,” Gruber said.
Pinsker said he’s seen the shortage unfold firsthand. At one of the assisted living facilities she toured for her mother, she noticed nurses taking residents to the dining hall for lunch at 10:30 a.m.; An hour and a half before lunch was to be served, there were not enough caregivers at home to pick them up at noon.
“They would bring them in, one by one, to whoever was available, sit them in rows at their tables, and leave them to sit there and wait,” Pinsker said. “This was their morning activity for the people at this nursing home. … There aren’t enough people to push them around. This is what staffing shortages look like in real time.”
Pinsker said her mother was placed in a nursing rehab facility, unable to walk or get out of bed, and there were zero doctors at the facility. He said the facility is mostly staffed by business-level caregivers who change potties and clothes.
“They don’t have enough doctors, registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and people who will come in and check blood pressure, take blood samples and take that kind of thing,” he said. “They are understaffed at every end of the spectrum.”
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Gruber said he thinks there are three paths the country can take to solve its labor shortage: Pay more for those jobs, let more immigrants fill the jobs, or create better career ladders in the industry.
“It’s not rocket science; you either have to pay more or let a lot more people in. There are wonderful, compassionate people all over the world who want to care for our elderly at the rates we’re willing to pay, and we should let them in,” Gruber said.
She’s also part of an initiative in Massachusetts focused on making training more affordable so nurses can move up the career ladder and fill gaps, which she said helps more people.
According to Care.com CEO Brad Wilson, the high demand for senior care made it clear that the company needed to create a separate category of business offerings. Care.com, known for listing child care jobs, has met the demand and offered additional senior care options as well as a tool for families trying to figure out what will work best for their situation and household.
The company views elder care as a $200 to $300 billion annual category, Wilson said. It’s now the company’s fastest growing segment.
“We’ve heard from families that it’s a huge challenge when you’re going through the elder care side of these things, because child care can be a little bit more structured, but sometimes your adult or elder care situation is sudden and there’s a lot to figure out,” she said.
Wilson said Care.com is seeing a growing demand for “home managers” who can help multiple people in a single home as care situations evolve.
“I can’t emphasize enough… this is the most unpredictable part of the caregiving journey and it is becoming increasingly common,” she added.
As the elderly population grows rapidly, so does the sandwich generation, whose members care for both their aging parents and young children. Wilson said his family was busy taking care of elderly family members while also raising three children.
“By 2034, there will actually be more elderly people in this country than children,” Wilson said, citing Census Bureau statistics. “Aged care is in a crisis. It’s actually the most invisible part of the care crisis today, and we’re really trying to bring some visibility to that and share that we have solutions that can help people.”
