Unable Able to Afford Retirement, Seniors Keep Working

Labor department statistics reveal that the elderly working beyond the traditional retirement age of 65 is at a record high. Their rate is soaring, as thousands of older people, on the verge of retirement; seek to boost their retirement incomes. Their number is at its highest, since the department started keeping such records.

This means that the elderly are putting off retirement for as long as possible, their current savings insufficient to ensure a secure and sheltered future. It also means that the longer they hold on, the lesser the employment prospects for the younger generation.

Analysts say the older generation is continuing to work to fund their slim incomes and that they are not in a financially strong enough position to retire in the first place.

Whilst the percentage of workers, past retirement age, is the highest, job totals for men under 55 and women between 25 and 54 has slid to its lowest levels in the last twenty years.

David A. Rosenberg, the chief economist of Gluskin Sheff, a Canadian firm said, “The fact of the matter is that this aging-but-not-yet-aged segment of the baby boomer class can’t afford to retire. Dreams of the 5,000-square-foot McMansion being a viable retirement asset have morphed into nightmares of a deflationary ball and chain.”

Ever since the Labor department started monitoring such statistics, in 1981, it seems that this is the first time that, one in nine American men, over the age of 75 was working in April. Corresponding figures for women showed that one in 20 women, above 75 years, were working.

The statistics were collected from a monthly survey of around 60,000 households. Since the pool of older people is normally small, the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not try to measure seasonal patterns. However, for workers under 55, the government does do seasonal calculations.

In the current scenario the workers in the older age group fare better than their younger counterparts.  The employment-to-population ratios are higher now than before the recession, for both women and men. More than 33 percent of men between 65 and 69 are working and more than 25 percent of women, of the same age group were working.

However, even as the recovery continues, there is little proof that younger workers are benefitting from the recovery. Over the last 12 months, the seasonally adjusted proportion of men ages 25 to 34 with jobs rose 2.3 percentage points, to 82.5 percent. In the same age group, the proportion of women with jobs rose one percentage point, to 68 percent.