New Pew Report: Recession Turns a Graying Office Grayer

The Pew Research Center released a report September 3 noting two distinct trends in the labor force: older adults are working longer, and younger adults are waiting longer to start working.

The study cites one government estimate that "93% of the growth in the US labor force from 2006 to 2016 will be among workers ages 55 and older" and notes that the Center's own survey, conducted earlier this year, shows that "a majority (54%) of workers ages 65 and older say the main reason they work is that they want to. Just 17% say the main reason is that they need the paycheck. An additional 27% say they're motivated by a mix of desire and need." The current economic crisis has increased the need part of that equation; the same survey reveals that 40% of adults who are working past the median retirement age of 62 say they are doing so because of the recession.

Although older adults are working longer, the proportion of women has not increased: "After marching steadily upward for five decades, the labor force participation rate of women has essentially flattened out. It now stands at 59%, slightly below the 60% peak it reached in 2000 at the end of a period of robust economic growth, and about 13 percentage points below the current rate for men."

Among its other key findings:

Older workers are the happiest workers. Some 54% of workers ages 65 and older say they are "completely satisfied" with their job, compared with just 29% of workers ages 16 to 64. The explanation lies in figures cited above -- a high percentage of these workers are working because they want to, not because they need to.

Retirement is not always voluntary. Only about half (51%) of all current retirees say they retired because they wanted to. About a third (32%) say they had to retire for health or other reasons, and about one-in-ten (9%) say their employer forced them to retire.

Even so, retirement gets high marks. More than half of all retirees (57%) say their retirement has turned out to be very satisfying; an additional 23% say it has been fairly satisfying. Only about one-in-six describe retirement as not too (10%) or not at all (6%) satisfying.

A summary of the report can be found here , and includes a link to the PDF of the full report.

Employment, Moving and Retirement

New Pew Report: Recession Turns a Graying Office Grayer

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