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.
$13 in 1990 is 35$ today with inflation. They are working more for 50% less.
What a useless article. It doesn’t even account for inflation. Is it designed to make boomers feel good about having to be a wal-mart greeter to survive?
Perhaps they are “bored” in retirement because even after a lifetime of labor there isn’t enough money left to do anything but sit and watch tv?
I’ve lost count of how many boomers I’ve heard say “I don’t know what I would do with myself if I didn’t have to work”. Fuck that generation. They had a chance for everything and said “whatever!” And just did nothing instead.
Literally heard a group of boomers talking over coffee the other day. One goes " weird we haven’t had snow, I guess it could be because of global warming" then another goes “yeah but not like we need to care!” Then they all had a big laugh about it…
They’re the same flavor fucked as us. I don’t hate them for not knowing what to do with themselves without working. I hate the meat grinder we’re in
First, their ‘i love work’ attitude is both taught from society (look at this article for example) and straight up cope. Not just that; their lives like our lives have been consumed by work and the business of living. I too have had precious little time and energy to spare on developing ourselves outside it.
It’s hard to be empathetic for the Boomer generation because they’ve done so much damage.
I wish people would just quit it with this ageist crap.
“We” are not fucked over by “the Boomer generation”, we are fucked over by unchecked capitalists. The struggle is not a generational one but a class struggle. It’s people with money stealing the value of your labor, but the Bezoses of this world sure love how you’re all blaming it on old people and are laughing all the way to the bank.
Shitting on boomers because they had affordable housing and well paying jobs is crab mentality. Everyone should have that, but it’s not the regular folk boomers who took that away from you. They were just lucky to be born at a time when the capitalists hadn’t ruined that yet. About the only thing you can blame them for is that some of them don’t quite understand how exactly the world has changed for the worse for young people, and that their back-in-the-day conventional wisdom doesn’t apply anymore.
Do they vote? Did they not participate in the creation and execution of the modern capitalist system that has ruined things? When confronted with their part in it all do they change? Does the lead in their bodies allow them to be empathetic toward younger generations? Either you are a bit older or you really love meemaw, but regardless they laid the groundwork then took no responsibility for their part in the destruction.
How so? They’re flopping between two parties just like the current generation of voters.
Watch the reactions when I type this:
Vote third party.
The only way voting third party works is if we get rid of “first to the pole” and instead used something like “ranked choice” voting.
Yeah but that’s not in the interest of the current duopoly. They’re not gonna shoot themselves in the foot as long as they keep getting votes doing this
People blaming the boomers for the current problems have an overly inflated view of the power of ordinary people.
The people are in power are those to blame, not the ordinary people who chose one of the few options presented to them.
Voting third party works in other countries but in the American system the only real option is to vote for some fringe wing of one of the parties. Bernie lost with the establishment in the end but he was close. Trump actually won and took over the party. That’s the only way to do it.
Boomers have been saying this shit for decades and I’m not seeing them achieve much.
But you keep doing you.
A fluff piece telling me how I should feel grateful for working till I die because it will appear that I’ll make more money?
The fun one is where they brag that older workers are making “substantially more” because they’re averaging $22/hr versus $13/hr in 1987. Adjusted for inflation, that $13/hr should be around $35/hr.
More people are working longer for less money.
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.
