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.
Sure. The lucky ones amongst those who can’t afford to retire.
Then there’s the unlucky ones.
The interesting thing is when you think about how social security is supposed to work.
The younger generations need to work and earn a decent wage to subsidize the older generations retirement.
The longer the older generations stay in the work force, the less openings there are for the younger generations to contribute to social security.
AI will only take jobs that pay well while we humans are all working in factories and McDonald’s.
Robots powered by AI will be making burgers and assembling on the factory floor.
The younger generations need to work and earn a decent wage to subsidize the older generations retirement
That’s not how RRSP works.
No, but it’s still correct.
Retired individuals make use of tax funded systems all the time and those only work if younger people pay taxes.
No that is not correct. That also isn’t how taxes work. Everyone who is working pays taxes and everyone benefits off the taxes they pay into. They don’t pay each other’s taxes.
Retirement is very different from taxes that are paid into for disability or welfare. And if you are not working you are not paying taxes. You’re either pulling from retirement that you pay yourself, unemployment that you also pay yourself or welfare which is a different topic altogether as we’re assuming this is to do with workforce tax so the individual is working and thus paying a tax for later benefit.
If you are talking about RRSP (or RIF dependant on age)that is paid privately from the individual. If you’re referring to a social system such as CPP is still paid into as taxes by the individual.
https://www.canada.ca/en/services/benefits/publicpensions/cpp/cpp-benefit/amount.html
You are still the same person benefitting off your own paid taxes regardless of age. Older people were paying taxes the whole time they worked which they are benefiting on the taxes that they made. Young people don’t donate to it for them. It is written on every pay-cheque you receive.
The issue is that you have to donate it to yourself but if you are not qualified in your job (and if there aren’t enough people to take the supporting roles) the taxes you pay into will be higher but the pay rate will be lower. This is the issue as these roles come up for grabs or that roles get rewritten as the person before them retired. Old people didn’t do this to you. So if you’re looking to blame someone for that, look to the bad managers. Not old Merryl who’s been a working nurse paying her taxes all her life.
you will be old one day and looking to benefit off the taxes YOU paid into all yours life. This isn’t something young people are paying into for someone else. They are paying it for themselves as an assurance and assumption as they get older.
The main complaint about aging population isn’t that someone isn’t paying taxes for an old person, it is that old people are now old enough to retire and leaving work to benefit on the taxes they made all their life and no one is qualified enough to take over the job. And no doubt some shifty bullshit is happening by upper mismanagement to the role the moment they leave. And thus the replacement is a smaller pool that now has to pay more taxes for themselves to benefit.
this isn’t the fault of older people that there was no one ready to replace them. It also isn’t the fault of older people that there are higher tax rates as the population shifts and it’s not equal. They can’t simply change your circumstance by simultaneously existing and not existing and if you think that’s how all your problems are solved, you probably have a lot of problems that are a ‘you being unreasonable about problems’ problem. Not a ‘them’ problem.
subsidize old folks retirement? why? didnt they work for 40+ years? shouldnt that have been long enough to save up a retirement fund?
I’m talking about in the USA. It is supposed to work the way you say. But in reality, you aren’t paying into an individual account for yourself. You pay into a pool that the government uses as soon as it receives the money for the current recipients of social security.
Really it’s a ponzi scheme with declining contributors and an increasing amount of people cashing out.
Kind of. But working longer also means that person costs less in social security, and the plan was designed as a pyramid scheme. But we can’t grow in population forever. So if this is the glut of old people, they need to work longer. That’s why one of the “fixes” to any system like that is increasing the retirement age. Also the economy isn’t a zero sum problem where I can take your job, really. It’s more like a living system. Jobs get created and lost, it grows from the bottom up.
That’s a good point.
Somethings I didn’t realize I don’t know of till now. When does one withdraw money from social security? Like do they have to request it from the government? A government worker might have a retirement age but for most Americans, it’s more of a guide. I know plenty of people that are in their 70s and they never plan to retire. If they continue to get paid on w-2 and report earnings to the IRS, does that mean they are ineligible to receive social security benefits?
I suppose if they are not able to collect social security money, and they continue to pay into it but they retire later then you are 100% correct and it’s not as big of a problem for the younger generations as I thought.
Although I would say that the job market is in fact a competition. No matter if you are someone with seniority and experience, someone with little experience willing to work for less, or simply an automaton.
$13 in 1990 is 35$ today with inflation. They are working more for 50% less.
Last week they were all quitting and retiring early.
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.
