Who is not retiring, and why?
Via Bloomberg comes this note on demographics and the work force, and continues a conversation about how that impacts all of us. Probably not in the way most often provided in punditry…such as taking jobs away from the millenium generation, wealthy old geezers stereotypes, or alarms sounded about who is to pay for services we want, etc.
It’s well known that the U.S. is turning gray. It’s less well known that the workforce is turning gray as well. The percentage of Americans who are 65 and older will rise from 13 percent in 2010 to 20 percent by 2030 — and, if the recent trend continues, a growing share of those elderly Americans will carry on working past the normal retirement age.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
In 1990, 11.8 percent of those 65 and older worked. In 2010 the figure was 17.4 percent. By 2020, the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects it to be 22.6 percent. The numbers are even more surprising for Americans older than 75. Less than 5 percent of them worked in 1990. In 2010, it was 7.4 percent. By 2020, according to the BLS, 10 percent of them will still be toiling away.
People do not retire simply because they do not feel secure and confident. With all of the latest retirement reforms people just do not know what they can be counting on. I am sure that they would not would not be old and same time apply for online loans till payday. This is not the best option for sure. Retirement is a luxury thing to afford these days, that is why people are trying to stay at work as long as possible just to put aside.
My experience is that people don’t retire because if they did they would go hungry or end up on the street. People have medical bills over and above what Medicare pays. SS benefits for lower end earners are minimal. But, in some states the eligibility standards for Medicaid are amazingly low–$3000 or more income will make you ineligible. The lowest SS basic insurance amount is $400.00. So, do the math. No matter how poor SS beneficiaries are, someone else is poorer.
Meanwhile, Congress and the President are considering a chained CPI to cut SS benefits about .03% a year, eventually reducing benefits as much as 10% at age 85. National debt, you know. NancyO
I wouldn’t count on being able to work until you are seventy.
even if you are going to live longer, eyes, back, knees, brain, and ability to put up with insanity give out on you.
moreover employers are working on ways to get rid of older workers.
people will remember why Social Security had to be invented just after they let the bad guys destroy it.
Alicia is right that “retirement is a luxury.” It is a luxury our grandparents hoped to be able to afford before old age made work hell. But now that Social Security has at last made it possible for ordinary workers to afford that luxury, we have allowed ourselves to be stampeded by the Big Lie.
and apparently are not willing to pay an extra eighty cents per week each year to secure our own right to retire… “because we paid for it ourselves.”
Nancy
is being sarcastic. she knows that Social Security doesn’t have a damn thing to do with the national debt.
the workers pay for it themselves.
so you have to ask who is so hell bent on cutting it, and why?