• Older Americans are facing career setbacks due to caregiving for aging parents, impacting finances.
• Many quit jobs or reduced their hours, unable to afford nursing homes for their loved ones.
• Some told Business Insider they weren't able to land back on their feet after taking years off.

Many older Americans are facing a difficult choice: leave behind a career they've built for decades to care for their parents, or stay at their job and cover the high cost of care.

In the late 1990s, Maylia Tsen's parents moved from New York to live with her in Southern California. Tsen said her mother was facing several health issues and that her area offered better access to healthcare. Tsen continued to work full-time as a VP of sales and marketing, but eventually, it became too difficult to balance the role with her caregiving responsibilities. Around 2005, she left the job she'd spent years working toward, which she said paid more than $150,000 annually.

"I couldn't take full-time hours," said Tsen, 63. "I couldn't make that commitment because I never knew what was going to happen with them."

About two dozen older Americans told Business Insider in responses to reader surveys about work and retirement that they moved, quit their jobs, or switched to a part-time work schedule to care for their parents. Many made the decision because taking on caregiving themselves was the most economical option, as they couldn't afford the high costs of nursing homes or other long-term care for their parents.

They're now earning less since they reentered the labor market or are struggling to get hired in the industries they worked in before stepping away.

Are you an older American who has struggled to secure work due to caring for parents? Have you struggled in general to find a job recently? To share your story, please fill out this form.

The most recent data on unpaid caregiving from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that over the combined years of 2021 and 2022, about 9 million or 21% of 55- to 64-year-olds provided eldercare, referring to unpaid care provided by family or friends to those 65 or older. This demographic did about four hours on average of eldercare each day.

A 2021 AARP report found, based on a survey of 2,380 caregivers, that they spent on average $7,242 annually of their own money. Among the 1,415 working caregivers in the survey, 29% had to take paid time off from work in the past year because of caregiving.

"It's been a real financial challenge and burden," said Tsen. "Caregiving has taken a toll on me, financially, physically, and mentally."

Tsen's mother died 11 years ago, but she still cares for her 97-year-old father. To facilitate her caregiving, she's turned down higher-paying work in favor of lower-paying jobs that offered her the flexibility she needed. To pay the bills, she's had to draw upon her savings and retirement funds.

Struggling to land work after a pause

Some people have continued to face career obstacles after scaling back their caregiving responsibilities. D. Peterson, 65, applied for jobs unsuccessfully for a year and a half after taking three years off to care for her mother.

Peterson, who lives in Georgia and asked to obscure her first name to protect her family's privacy, often switched jobs and worked as a leasing consultant, administrative assistant, and real-estate agent throughout her career. She made enough to live comfortably but called herself a "poor money manager" and said she didn't prepare well for retirement. Because of her financial situation and her mother's health, she moved in with her in 2010.

At the start of the pandemic, she quit her job where she was earning $40,000 annually to care full time for her mom, who was in her mid-80s. Once her siblings became more involved with caretaking in 2023, Peterson looked for work — only to realize that landing a role with a three-year gap and being close to retirement age would be challenging.

She wasn't familiar with the new hiring technology like online interviews, and there weren't many administrative assistant roles remotely or in her area. The available ones had hundreds of applicants. And because she switched industries during her career, she said she couldn't prove her authority in one field as easily.

Peterson landed a job at a library a month ago, which pays $11 an hour, but she injured her ankle two weeks in and said she's applying elsewhere. She doesn't foresee herself being able to retire as she relies on her $1,600 monthly Social Security checks.

"I'm trying to save as much as I can and finally put myself on a budget, but my main concern now is my mom, who's losing her memory and eyesight but doesn't want to go into assisted living," Peterson said. "It's hard to stay motivated when you feel like you don't have the skills or face age discrimination."

The labor market has been difficult for job seekers in general, including for older Americans, some of whom have taken huge pay cuts after a layoff or voluntary departure. Additionally, even though the unemployment rate is historically low, hiring rates have slipped from more than 4% a few years ago to 3.3% and 3.4% in recent months.

Rita Choula, senior director of caregiving for AARP Public Policy Institute, told BI that more companies should aim to support caregivers. This can look like offering leave for caregivers or changes to company culture to normalize caring for an older adult.

"It's great that you have vacation leave, but we really want caregivers who are under enough stress to be able to take that time for them to rest and reset," Choula said.

Only finding limited work options

Older Americans told BI that caregiving meant sacrificing career opportunities that didn't work with their schedules, often adversely affecting their finances.

"Many employed caregivers face strain in managing both caregiving and work responsibilities simultaneously," the AARP report said. "These consequences can lead to reduced job security, fewer employment opportunities, and ultimately, lower retirement savings."

In 2017, Robin, who asked to use her first name for fear of professional repercussions, sold her condo in the DC area and moved into a nearby one-bedroom apartment with her legally blind mother. She had just been laid off from her government relations job.

Robin, 62, said caring for her mother has had lasting effects on her career and earnings. To help pay the bills, Robin said she worked various retail jobs, including as a cashier at Walgreens. She said this income wasn't sufficient, and she had to deplete much of her savings and 401(k).

"During that time, I was unable to hold anything more than a part-time job," she said.

In 2022, Robin's mother died, which allowed her to pursue full-time government relations roles. But, despite her roughly 20 years of industry experience, she said she struggled to land a job.

"Employers just see the gap on your résumé, and they don't realize that your time was spent productively, but in a very different way," she said.

In September 2022, Robin enrolled in the Senior Community Service Enrollment program, which helps unemployed older people find work. She said the program helped her land a part-time data analytics role with the National Council on Aging — which she started in October 2023 — and that she's interviewing for a full-time position with the organization.

"I'm really hoping the job comes through," she said, adding, "I definitely have to recover my finances."

• Recent MBA graduates are having a harder time finding jobs than a couple of years ago.
• A white-collar hiring slowdown has impacted MBA graduates at schools like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford.
• We asked economists whether the hiring landscape could improve in the years to come.

The white-collar job market has gotten so competitive, that even MBA graduates — once thought of as having a leg up in hiring — are struggling to land jobs. Their troubles could stick around for a while.

Since July, Joshua has worked at Starbucks while he looks for a marketing job. In the fall of 2023, his contract position at PlayStation was cut and, despite working with a recruiting agency, he still hasn't landed a job in his chosen industry.

"I'm an MBA graduate in his 30s, living paycheck to paycheck, watching what feels like the rest of my colleagues and classmates move forward with their lives," said Joshua, who earned his business degree from Santa Clara University in 2021. His last name is known to BI but is being withheld due to fear of professional repercussions.

Job acceptance rates at some of the top business schools have declined in recent years. Much of it likely has to do with a slowdown in white-collar hiring overall, but other evidence suggests companies are hiring fewer MBAs. After all, they may require a higher salary than their peers at a time when companies are pivoting to invest in technology that promises to do the job cheaper than any human — no matter their degree level.

MBA graduates' job-acceptance rates are down in a slowing job market

Business Insider looked at the job acceptance rates three months post-graduation at the top 15 business schools from US News and World Report's 2024 ranking — and focused on the nine MBA programs with publicly available data going back eight years and Harvard, with data going back six years.

At eight of the 10 schools, the class of 2024's job acceptance rate was the lowest.

Economists told BI that elevated interest rates and companies' investments in artificial intelligence are among the factors that have led to slower hiring for MBA graduates.

Gracy Sarkissian, associate dean of Columbia University's career management center, said that while the three-month post-graduation job acceptance rate for the school's MBA graduates fell in 2023, employment reached pre-pandemic levels by the end of the year.

Dartmouth, Yale, Stanford, MIT, Dartmouth, the University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Virginia didn't respond to requests for comment. Duke and Harvard declined to comment.

The usual suspects for MBA hiring — consulting firms and Big Tech — are hiring fewer of them, the Wall Street Journal reported in January.

It's all part of an overall hiring slowdown. US businesses are hiring at nearly the lowest rate since 2013, per Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

While the overall US unemployment rate remains low compared to historical levels, many people who need a job are dealing with a considerably tougher market than a few years ago.

Are you an MBA graduate looking for a job? Are you comfortable sharing your story with a reporter? Please fill out this form.

Higher interest rates and economic uncertainty have slowed hiring for white-collar roles

Elevated interest rates have contributed to slower hiring in industries such as finance, tech, and consulting — sectors that attract many MBA grads, Kory Kantenga, head of economics, Americas at LinkedIn, told BI. Instead, healthcare, government, and hospitality have been dominating hiring since 2023.

In addition to higher interest rates, uncertainty about Trump administration policies and the impacts of AI have led some businesses to be more cautious about expanding their workforces, said Audrey Guo, an assistant professor of economics at Santa Clara University. She added tech companies that hired workers in droves during the pandemic — only to lay off many workers in recent years — may be looking to avoid this cycle in the current climate.

Allison Shrivastava, an economist with the Indeed Hiring Lab, said some companies could be slowing hiring because they're waiting to see if the economy can stick a "soft landing" — in which inflation comes down, the unemployment rate doesn't spike, and a recession is avoided. She said job openings for finance and tech roles on Indeed have fallen considerably from their peaks in 2022, to below levels seen in February 2020.

"If I were looking for a job in banking and finance or software development, I would expect it to definitely take longer than it did in 2022," Shrivastava said.

Finding work can be challenging even in sectors with more job openings. This includes management roles, where openings listed on Indeed are roughly 9% higher than they were in February 2020.

Dan Trujillo is trying to find one of those management roles. He was laid off in January from his role as a director of customer experience at a manufacturing company. He earned his Executive MBA from the University of Colorado a year earlier and said he struggled to land his previous job. "I applied to somewhere between 25 and 30 positions without ever hearing anything back other than a rejection email," said Trujillo, who's in his mid-40s and based in the Denver area.

Guo said some employers could be slowing hiring as they monitor the potential of AI tools in the workplace. Additionally, some companies' significant investments in AI could also be leaving them with less money to put toward hiring workers.

"I think the roles where we're seeing the biggest declines in demand now tend to be the ones that have really high returns to using AI," said Lisa Simon, chief economist at the workforce analytics company Revelio Labs. She cited software engineers and data analysts as two examples.

Rate cuts and an uptick in retirements could help job seekers

Looking ahead, Kantenga said that future Federal Reserve interest rate cuts could help improve labor market conditions for MBA graduates. CME FedWatch, which projects interest-rate changes based on market activity, forecasts a nearly 84% chance rates will be lower by the end of the year. However, Kantenga said uncertainties tied to the Trump administration could lead some employers to slow hiring until they have a clearer sense of what policies will be implemented.

Additionally, some changes to the current labor market could work in the favor of MBA graduates. Satyam Panday, chief US and Canada economist at S&P Global Ratings, said that an uptick in baby boomer retirements in the coming years could create a gap in the workforce that AI likely won't be able to fill — which could make it easier for some MBA graduates to find work. While some companies may be able to get by with fewer workers, Guo said they'll still need to invest in their leaders of the future.

"Companies will need to think about how to still preserve a pipeline of new workers so that, eventually, when the senior people retire or need to be replaced, there still is some pipeline of people with that experience," she said.

• Middle managers have a vital job in the workplace.
• Some companies have scaled back on middle management.
• Workplace experts shared why middle managers can be essential to a business's success.

US businesses are betting that they can thrive with fewer middle managers. They could come to regret it.

Some business leaders think scaling back middle-manager roles — a trend called the "Great Flattening" — could help them cut costs and operate more efficiently. Managers and workplace experts, however, told Business Insider that middle managers can play several important roles, including executing the goals of upper management, addressing workplace issues, and boosting workers' morale and performance.

"They really do form the connection between the company's strategy and execution by workers on the front lines of the business," Daniel Zhao, the lead economist at Glassdoor, said. "Without an effective layer of middle management, you aren't going to get strategy translating into results."

BI's Aki Ito reported that some companies had found that employing fewer middle managers could significantly strain their operations. Workplace experts and managers described to BI what makes middle managers important, why companies should invest in training them, and the challenges of these roles.

Why workplace experts think middle managers are valuable

Bryan Hancock, a McKinsey partner who has written about management, said middle managers are critical for an organization's overall performance. Hancock also emphasized their role in employees' performance and well-being, including helping workers grow in their careers.

"Managers are critical in making individuals feel like they belong, feel understood, and connecting all of that messiness of our personal life to our work life," Hancock said.

Middle managers can be a key part of building up the entire workforce. "Companies have to invest in the skillset and the development of these managers in order to avoid certain pitfalls that can ultimately impact revenue generation and career development and growth," Jessica Hardeman, a senior director of attraction and engagement at the career site Indeed, said, adding "heightened emotional maturity," digital fluency, and adaptability were attributes of a good manager.

While Zhao, Hardeman, and Hancock say managers are critical to a workplace, the job market for middle managers has cooled down.

An analysis of job postings provided to Business Insider by Revelio Labs, a workforce analytics provider, found opportunities for middle-manager roles declined by 42% from April 2022 to October 2024. Opportunities for junior employees, associate workers, and senior leadership roles fell by 15%, 17%, and 25%, respectively.

With fewer opportunities in middle management and a cooler job market expected in 2025, middle-manager job seekers are competing for other roles.

"Career setbacks have created a traffic jam at the bottom of the ladder, with middle managers now competing in the same pool of jobs as frontline managers and experienced employees in the same pool as new grads," a Glassdoor report published in November said.

In addition to the cooler demand for middle managers, the job has become more challenging in recent years. Managers may have had to handle more work because of fewer hires, tried to get people to comply with return-to-office policies, and been the bearers of unfortunate compensation and career mobility news with scalebacks in pay bumps and promotions.

Workplace experts said managers should receive adequate training to help make their jobs a bit more manageable. Zhao said companies should invest in training the next leaders to set them up for long-running success in this step of the career ladder.

Why managers think they are valuable

Managers who talked to BI also said middle management does a lot for the workplace.

Tsvetelina Nasteva, a human resources manager for Casinoreviews.net, said the idea that middle managers just deal with the "day-to-day stuff" upper management doesn't have time for oversimplifies what they do.

"Our jobs are so much bigger than that," said Nasteva, who's in her 30s. "We're the ones driving innovation, shaping culture, engaging talent, and providing the insights that help steer the ship."

Kyle, a former manager, said he thought middle managers could be valuable for businesses — but often weren't given the power and freedom to fully execute their job responsibilities.

"I think the great lie told to middle managers, at least many of them, is that they can be arbiters of change and will be free to mold their teams and processes in their own style — except then that's not how they're treated," said Kyle, who asked for partial anonymity because of a fear of professional repercussions.

He said that instead, some middle managers were largely tasked with things like time-sheet approvals, disciplinary conversations, and running meetings — administrative work upper management doesn't have time for.

Tiago Pita, a brand and e-commerce director in the UK, said he decided to step into a middle-management role because he wanted to shape his team's direction while still being involved in day-to-day operations. He said juggling these two priorities is what makes middle managers valuable.

"We're the ones translating high-level goals into actionable tasks, ensuring that our teams stay on track and motivated," said Pita, who's in his 30s. "Middle managers also play a big role in sustaining company culture, as we work closely with team members and address their questions, struggles, and achievements on a more personal level than upper management can."

What has your middle management experience been like? Have you quit a middle manager role or don't plan to become a manager? Reach out to these reporters at [email protected] and [email protected].

• A Pew Research Center analysis shows the largest occupations for young US workers without degrees.
• Men often work as drivers or in construction, while women work in customer service or nursing roles.
• College enrollment rates have declined in recent years.

Customer service representatives and truck drivers are the most common jobs for young women and men without a four-year degree, respectively.

Men and women between the ages of 25 and 34 who don't have college degrees also work as construction laborers, health aides, cashiers, and chefs, per a Pew Research Center analysis published in July.

There was little overlap in the most common jobs for young men and women without a college degree, but the two groups did share two roles: first-line supervisors of sales workers and retail salespersons.

Roles like these have become particularly prevalent for men, whose college enrollment rates have fallen behind women's in recent years.

Forty-seven percent of US women between the ages of 25 and 34 have a bachelor's degree compared to 37% of men, per a Pew analysis published in November. However, overall college enrollment rates have fallen in recent years: The share of male high school graduates between the ages of 16 and 24 enrolling in college has declined to 58% as of 2023 from 67% in 2018, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Young women's enrollment rate has declined to 65% from 71% over this period.

Many of these young people are seeking jobs that don't require a college degree, and some have benefited from companies dropping degree requirements. The share of US job postings that require at least a college degree has fallen to 17.8% from 20.4% in 2019, according to an Indeed report published earlier this year. To be sure, many employers still prioritize hiring workers with a college diploma.

The Pew report published in July also highlighted the most common job categories for Americans with a four-year college degree. Four occupation categories were among the 10 most common jobs for both men and women: software developers, managers, accountants and auditors, and elementary and middle school teachers.

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