According to the Families and Work Institute, more than 40 percent of us care for an aging family member. This is a huge amount of Americans and it takes up a lot of our time, but the good news is that employers are taking notice of this. Many employees are finding that their jobs are picking up a portion of their parents’ senior care costs. In the long run, this ends up saving money. There have been many individuals that have felt the need to quit their jobs and care for a family member full time, but the opportunity cost of this has been more costly than working and paying for a caregiver on top of this.
Back in 2008, only 31 percent of employers offered help with senior care referral resources. This basically means that they offer a way to help you find the assistance you need in caring for an elderly loved one. Today, that number has gone up to 43 percent of employers and it keep rising. The same increase is true when it comes to allowing employees to set aside money to help pay for elder care. In 2008, that number stood at 23 percent and now it’s at 41 percent. This money is mostly set aside pre-tax, too. The biggest lack of help that the survey detected, though, was the availability of respite care. The increase in assistance in providing this has increased from 3 percent to only 7 percent, unfortunately.
This is all positive change. The fact that anything is being done at all is impressive, mainly because of the crunch down on insurance costs over the last several years. None of these things are required by law, and the fact that they are an option for you to take advantage of is extremely helpful in reducing the senior care burden that so many of us face on a daily basis. And the good news is that because these things are so helpful, there is a strong likelihood that they’ll keep becoming more popular and grow in scope. There are a few reasons for this, but because the senior citizen population is growing so quickly and because the cost of care keeps going up, solving the problem earlier rather than later will end up saving employees and employers a lot of money by letting them keep their jobs and care for their loved ones at the same time. It’s an approach that lets everyone benefit.
Another big reason why this is happening now is that company leadership tends to be older now than ever before, and this means that they are probably dealing with an elderly parent and realize what a struggle it is. It’s the bigger companies that offer these services right now, and this makes sense because they are the ones that would be hardest hit by losing multiple people in upper management roles.
In the end, this is encouraging news. Senior care is becoming more and more of a mainstream issue in our society, and that means that there will be more ease in securing the best type of care as time goes by.
Leave a Reply