The years 1992 through 2001 saw a gain in the proportion of Californians 45 years old or older in the work force and the proportion of workers who were 65 years old or older increased to 2.9 percent, the U.S. Census Bureau said in a report today. The analysis of California’s older workers is based on a new Census Bureau program, Local Employment Dynamics (LED) <http://lehd.dsd.census.gov>.

     The report, A Profile of Older Workers in California [pdf], highlights the age composition of the state’s work force; job gains and losses for older workers by industry; industries in which older workers are concentrated, their job stability and earnings.

     “States have had economic indicators for industries before, and they have had demographic characteristics of workers before,” said Census Bureau Director Louis Kincannon. “What is unique about LED is that it shows how the work force changes each quarter within a state or substate area, in what industries the changes occur and the characteristics of workers involved in the changes. These indicators give new insight into each state’s economy and how fluid employment is in local areas.”

     Some highlights from the California report:

• In 2001, workers 65 years old or older in California were most likely to be employed in the following industries: business services, eating and drinking establishments and health services. Real estate is also an important source of work for this category of workers.

• Real estate was an industry with a low turnover rate for workers 55 years old or older, while business services had a high turnover rate.

• Of industries that employed more than 4,000 people age 65 or older, the highest paying was electronic and electrical equipment ($5,005 a month).

• The industry with the highest average monthly earnings in 2001 for workers age 65 or older was security and commodity brokers ($11,264). But the number of such workers was only 1,744.

• On average, in 2001, among workers age 65 and over, 34,461 jobs were created and 40,994 were lost.

     The LED consists of individual partnerships between 29 states and the Census Bureau. The Census Bureau will release reports for its partner states on a variety of topics over the coming year. Funding for this report was provided by the National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services.

     In addition, quarterly work force indicators such as job creation and new hires are currently available for the state of California and several other partner states for selected years, sex, age groups and geographies at <http://lehd.dsd.census.gov/led/01/004/index.html>.

     Because the statistics come from a variety of sources, including state administrative records and basic demographic information, they are not directly comparable with statistics from household-based surveys such as the decennial census long form, the American Community Survey and the Current Population Survey. Industries are organized using the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system. The LED program soon will move from the SIC system to the North American Industry Classification System. As in all data estimation processes, the results are subject to errors, such as those arising from data processing or incomplete records. The Census Bureau uses a variety of procedures to minimize such errors or the impact of such errors.

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