WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – The U.S. economy is finally creating jobs again, but most of them seem to be going to aging baby boomers, not to young adults just starting out on their careers.
But as we shall see, appearances can be deceiving.
What we do know, however, is that for the first time in our history, people in their late 60s are more likely to have a job than teenagers are.

Job growth has been very uneven since the end of 2009, with the largest growth in the 55-70 age group and among men.
The raw (but ultimately meaningless) figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics are jarring: Between December 2009 (when employment began to rise again following the Great Recession) and March 2012, employment increased by 4.1 million, according to the BLS survey of households. Employment among older folk — 55 and over — grew by 2.9 million. This group has about a third of the adult population, but accounted for roughly 70% of the employment growth over the past 27 months. Read the BLS data here.
At the same time, the number of employed young adults under 25 grew by just 815,000. Teenage employment actually declined. And employment in the prime working-age population grew by just 437,000.
What’s going on here? Why are the people who should be thinking about retirement clinging to their jobs instead?
Part of this story is a real phenomenon: More baby boomers are staying on the job because they are healthy enough to keep working. They like working. Further, many of them desperately need the money: They lost their retirement nest egg when the housing market collapsed and the stock market stalled. Fewer of them can rely on a defined benefit pension, and more of them must rely on their own savings to fund their retirement.

For the first time in our...