Hispanic workers 50-Plus are a vigorous group of “invisible boomers,” who could help employers solve projected labor shortfalls in the coming years, according to a new study released by AARP last week. This article for New England EthnicNEWz is by Eduardo A. de Oliveira, a New America Media Fellow working on the Ethnic Elders Newsbeat, a NAM project sponsored by The Atlantic Philanthropies.
When Jacob Lozada was 13, a neighbor came knocking on his door in San Jose, Puerto Rico, to tell his family that his grandfather had fainted at work.
“My father said, ‘Son, this is a blessing.’ I didn’t understand why,” Lozada recalled.
When the elder Lozada came home, Jacob’s father told him it was time to retire.
“And what I did not understand, until later in my life, was why a 60-year-old man would want to get up at 5:00 in the morning to go to work cutting sugar cane, which was one of the worst jobs anybody could have in the tropics, especially in Puerto Rico,” Jacob Lozada added.
Lozada, a board member of AARP (formerly called the American Association of Retired Persons), was a panelist at a seminar called “Older Hispanic American Workers: Current Status and Future Prospects.” The panel was one of many at the AARP Diversity Conference in Chicago last week with the theme, “The Power of Inclusion.” READ FULL STORY
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