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.
Surely they adjusted for that.
I dk depends if there is an agenda or if the person saw data and forgot. I’m always skeptical if they don’t say equalivent or with inflation. They just wrote “compared” which seems like no math was done. Pretty sure we are all earning less than our counter parts in 80’s.
I’m not even sure where they got it from because it’s not in the linked Pew article… from 4 years ago.
Shirley.
It’s hard to be empathetic for the Boomer generation because they’ve done so much damage.
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
But voting third party doesn’t actually accomplish anything. Take it from someone who did it for decades. It doesn’t shake up or change the system, it just perpetuates the minority rule set up by Project Redmap.
The right way to do it is to vote your conscience locally, until there is enough support at higher levels. Skipping right to voting for third party presidential candidates is simply naive, I’m afraid.
Edit: Steve Hofstetter lays it out well (I wish I could find this one elsewhere) https://m.facebook.com/stevehofstetter/videos/why-voting-third-party-for-president-makes-no-sense/359024631794244/
Same shit boomers say. So don’t blame em.
Dismissing entire groups based on stupid labels is ugly.
What’s interesting about this observation is that you have to conclude voting isn’t the solution. No matter how you vote, either Democrats or Republicans are going to win in 99% of cases. Every vote you deny to one party to teach them a lesson is an implicit vote for the other party. The counts won’t matter so long as one or the other win.
So what’s the moral thing to do? In terms of voting on a national scale, you pick the better option. But on a state and local level, vote for a reasonable third party that’s investing in growth.
And no, that hasn’t been tried before, because none of our current third parties actually want change. They throw away their money at the federal level while rubbing shoulders with oligarchs. We need a party that starts local with a 50 state ground game and then gradually accumulates power through local victories. Creating this party is what we need to figure out what to do.
greens run for local positions near around me but im in a major metropolitan area.
Be the change you seek or stop blaming boomers cause you’re all doing the exact same shit as 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.
What do you mean? Trump run the country for 4 years, packed the supreme court and banned abortion. If that’s not much I don’t know what is. Or do you think it doesn’t count because that’s not what you want to achieve?
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.
They also have collective power as a voting bloc and group that participates actively in local elections
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.
Okay thank you, I was so confused reading that. I was waiting for any mention of adjusting for inflation.
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.
Wait until AI takes jobs -_-
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.
We’ve had the tech to replace these jobs with bots for years and we haven’t. But artists were replaced overnight.
I know plenty of employed artists.
Oh? That means that every artist is employed and AI hasn’t impacted them at all? Weird.
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.
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.
subsidize old folks retirement? why? didnt they work for 40+ years? shouldnt that have been long enough to save up a retirement fund?
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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.
some severe misinformation about that video :
For one it’s 9 years out of date and thus cannot apply to todays demographic of massive influence of Airbnb and gentrification.
For another while it mentions the national debt it fails to mention HOW the national debt (cough military) became that bad. It is mainly an accountant error (president is basically an accountant)
For another it fails to mention the taxations that are actually in place for pensions (I’ll mention below) and it also fails on how to make the connection about how those pensions are ‘wealth transfer’ programs. And speaking of wealth transfer, it got the definition wrong. Wealth transfer isn’t paying into someone’s pension. The definition is actually hereditary in that it goes the opposite way: what the older generation leave to their family upon death or invest for schooling or help out with buying houses for their children .
For another the crux comes up at 3:01 and your entire argument is boomers are struggling to sell stuff…if this were true they could always take a page from essentially the rest of the world: sell your stuff offshore or to companies like Airbnb . In fact it’s one of the major (global) issues right now with finding enough housing because everyone is selling their properties (and there isn’t enough) and it’s all owned by offshore because there is always offshore buyers and there’s always capitalists on the Airbnb market. And I may remind you that a lot of younger generations now fill up the capitalist roles who are more than willing to turn a profit. I find it hard to believe that selling your property is the end all problem here when practically the rest of the world is on fire because of how easy it is to sell property for a hefty chunk of money and many vulnerable are homeless as a result(many of those vulnerable are boomers with financial and medical issues btw). The richer Boomers with property simply do not need a millennial to buy their property to turn profit. They got many buyers offshore waiting with baited breath. But what is an issue you should be paying attention to : capitalists such as airBNB are your problem here raising the prices. That is being run by everyone younger than boomers too who did receive a transfer of wealth. Not just boomers.
For another 6:15 many of these issues that younger generations are facing are put in place by younger than boomers. It’ll reiterate what I said in another post: if a boomer leaves a job and the job description changes/gets sent off shore or etc, this isn’t what boomers are responsible for. This change comes from younger generations changing the job description locking their own fellow generation out so they can make a buck. Just look to Zuckerberg and how much he makes selling private information. He’s a millennial btw. Cuz the richer younger generation are probably even more successful at greed than the boomers. There’s an even more exacerbating differential on class now than before when you have a diversity of generations filling the billionaire roles now. That isn’t on the boomers. That’s on capitalism. Retiring Boomers are no longer the only people at the capitalism table making bad decisions. So they can’t simultaneously exist in a job and also retire to not exist on the job to take all the blame. That’s just unreasonable and unrealistic to point all problems that way. At that point it’s only about shifting responsibility. It has nothing to do with fixing it.
And another: it doesn’t even mention the OAI nor 401k which is currently present in the USA and applicable in the same way as an RRSP and CPP is. It’s pretty clear that their pension comes from a very similar tax structure as to what common wealth countries do. With these pensions the important thing to keep in mind is that a company will not take a prerogative to invest in an entitlement program so it would be in earnest that the employee needs to keep on top of it to contribute their percentage for their private RRSP or 401. an employer may decide to contribute but it isn’t compulsory anywhere. Well almost anywhere…… in Australia the superannuation is compulsory. But in North America it is not.
(Note: If this is taking you by surprise and you have a dumping stomach feeling please rush to an accountant to help you understand what your next step should be regarding your 401 immediately)
that is something perhaps not being taught to you alongside in school about these other topics. When it really should be.
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.
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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?
Why doesnt anyone want to work?
Says the tech illiterate boomer who is vastly underqualified and incompetent compared to the far more qualified and educated millennials who cannot find a job that he makes fun of on facebook all day at work.
I don’t get it…
Last week they were all quitting and retiring early.
Sure. The lucky ones amongst those who can’t afford to retire.
Then there’s the unlucky ones.
The headline makes it sound like boomers are out-earning other generations or making good money.
- The average private sector wage is $34/hr. This indicates wildly skewed upper bounds so we can’t draw any conclusions about their earning.
- The median in 2020 was $23/hr, implying boomers are earning less than other generations
- $22/hr is about $45k/yr. Generously that’s about $40k after taxes. Assuming a health plan of $600/mo (premiums are higher at higher ages) and giving a generous 50% employer payment, we’re down to about 37k. tbh I feel like healthcare costs should be doubled or tripled based on costs I’ve seen from family and friends. Rounding nicely, that’s about 2k a month. If we use the incredibly outdated figure of rent/mortgage being 30%, we have 1400 to spend or save. Let’s pretend we’re able to get all bills under 400 so we have 1000 left over to use.
- Hip replacement is conservatively 3k with insurance. That’s three months of work. You’re probably taking FMLA which means you probably need another three months to cover expenses while recovering. Use hip replacement as a stand in for other surgeries.
- Let’s pretend crowns are as cheap as 1k/tooth. You’re probably looking at one a year ish over time.
- Let’s pretend hearing aids are 2.5k and you’re lucky enough to have insurance that covers them every few years. You’re still out of pocket at least 1k, burning another month.
- Some conservative estimates for cancer are about 6k for lung, breast, and rectal after insurance (prostrate is cheaper!). That’s six months assuming no FMLA; you’re probably taking some time so that’s probably more months.
Boomers are fucked earning that. Millenials are even more fucked. Who knows how fucked GenZ is.
Let’s pretend hearing aids are 2.5k and you’re lucky enough to have insurance that covers them every few years. You’re still out of pocket at least 1k, burning another month.
My hearing aids were $3,600 and they were the lower end of the scale. And my insurance didn’t cover a single penny of it.
Boomers are fucked earning that. Millenials are even more fucked. Who knows how fucked GenZ is.
And GenX is ignored again!
Sorry. As a GenX-er, I felt compelled to point that out. Don’t be surprised if future articles talk about how GenX isn’t retiring, but is continuing to work, though. Personally, I’m doing fine for now, but my retirement savings are way too low. I could either save more for retirement and end up financially underwater right now, or keep my head above water and then struggle when it comes time to retire.
So I’ll likely be working until I’m 80 in the hopes of stretching my meager retirement savings through the rest of my life. And that’s assuming that Social Security isn’t gone by then.
Fair callout! I shouldn’t keep forgetting GenX.
In researching all the bullets I was really surprised to find that hearing aids aren’t covered. It’s something like five states have some level of requirement. As someone with hearing loss, that’s really concerning and I’m not looking forward to that.
I shouldn’t keep forgetting GenX.
We’re used to it…
And continuing their destruction of opportunity for future generations.
If I couldn’t afford to stop working, I would be forced to stay on the payroll forever, regardless of what I might prefer to be doing.
“You should have saved more.”
“You lived too extravegently”
“You should have done more politically to prevent the current economic situation from fomenting”
2 of those 3 are often used to dismiss other generations as they struggle.
3rd is just aimed at the generation that made today’s reality happen.
And thinking that the discovery of the cognitive decline would make the policymakers rethink the role of the elder in (or rather out and properly compensated) the workforce… Such a fool I was
I’ve been seeing this headline for at least 10 years now
compared with what older workers earned in the 1980s. Now, the typical older worker earns $22 per hour, compared with $13 per hour then
$13 in 01/1980 is $51 in 11/2023 based on buying power. $13 in 01/1989 is just shy of $33 now.
Shhhhh.
Don’t tell them that 3 pennies aren’t actually more than two quarters because there’s more of them.
Otherwise people will catch on that they are being grossly fleeced by an unfair and abhorrent system of generalized inequality.
Reap what you sow.
