The graying of the American workforce continues: Baby boomers are working longer and earning more than their predecessors did in what Americans typically think of as retirement years, new research finds.
Almost 20% of Americans ages 65 and older were employed this year, according to a new report from Pew Research Center. That’s nearly double the share of those who were working 35 years ago. In total, there are around 11 million Americans 65 or older who are working today, comprising 7% of all wages and salaries paid by U.S. employers. In 1987, they made up 2%.
And not only are more Americans at or above the traditional retirement age of 65 working, but they are also earning substantially more compared with what older workers earned in the 1980s. Now, the typical older worker earns $22 per hour, compared with $13 per hour then. Their wage growth—some of which can be attributed to their working longer hours than older Americans did in the past—has outpaced that of workers ages 25 to 64 over the same time period, according to Pew’s research, which is based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey and the Federal Reserve’s 2022 Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking.
I think this article is making an incorrect assumption that these older workers are sticking around in the same caliber jobs they had when they were younger. Those people simply enjoy their jobs, and can still do them, so are not ready to just stop doing it. But there are many more classes of older workers:
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the ones with the financial security to retire early, but do not want to just sit around the house all day. They may want to stay employed part-time somewhere as a social outlet.
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the ones with the financial security to retire early, except for health care. These workers might take jobs with less responsibility and pay, but make liberal use of their health insurance until they qualify for Medicare.
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the ones who don’t have that financial security, so they still need to be an active part of the workforce until their Social Security payments kick in.(which still may not be enough)
So, it’s not always the case that an older worker remaining in the workforce prevents another mid-life worker from advancing. However, every older worker remaining in the workforce fills someone else’s position, and eventually it all trickles down to the entry level jobs. So it does end up screwing today’s new grads in the end, just like their student loan debt and the sky-high housing prices do.
My manager is a prime example of your first category. He has a nice federal retirement and a chunk of a 401k, but he stays here…riding his desk. He can’t begin to fill the shoes of the Gen-X manager he replaced. Thus the quality of my department suffers because he’s a weak manager and susceptible to the schmooze by younger employees.
He took over the position just after he: 1. Moved 2 hours away, and 2. Had a massive heart attack. This guy’s circumstances are screaming at him to retire, but he just. Won’t. Move. On.
However, every older worker remaining in the workforce fills someone else’s position, and eventually it all trickles down to the entry level jobs.
Assuming anyone is hiring entry-level positions.
At my company, there have been countless rounds of layoffs and early retirement packages, and nobody being hired at entry-level. The few people who have been hired have come in with a decade or more of industry specific experience, and have been expected to hit the ground running.
I don’t know if all industries are following similar trends, but my kids experience trying to find “no experience needed, entry level” jobs suggests it is pretty wide spread.
Working your way up from the bottom seems to be increasingly a thing of the past.
