Rising Senior Unemployment and the Need to Work at Older Ages

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Abstract

Unemployment rates for older workers reached record levels in 2009, partly because fewer workers eligible for early retirement benefits are dropping out of the labor force. Growing concerns about the adequacy of retirement savings and whether retirees will have enough money to live comfortably in later life appear to have discouraged early retirement. Instead, more older workers are now remaining in the labor force and searching for work after they lose their jobs. The need for older adults to keep working raises the imperative for new policies that help address the special challenges that older job seekers face.

Background

The 2007–09 recession hit workers hard. The unemployment rate reached 9.7 percent in August 2009, the highest level in 26 years. That translates into 14.9 million adults out of work and actively seeking employment. The true impact on the labor market has been even greater. Millions of workers were employed part-time because they couldn’t find full-time employment, and some nonworking adults were not included in the official unemployment count because they had become so discouraged by their poor job prospects that they dropped out of the labor force and stopped looking for work. With these two groups factored in, the share of the labor force that was unemployed or underemployed rose to about 16 percent in August. The one piece of good news is that average wages for those workers who have remained employed did not fall as employment contracted.

Unlike previous economic downturns over the past 30 years, this recession has not spared older workers. Those earlier recessions raised unemployment rates at older ages, but the increases were modest. Seniority rules, especially in unionized workplaces, generally protected older workers from layoffs. And in the past, many workers who lost their jobs at age 62 or older would drop out of the labor force, choosing to retire and collect Social Security benefits instead of searching for new jobs. As a result, relatively few older adults were included within the ranks of the unemployed. In 2009, however, unemployment rates for older workers have reached record levels, partly because fewer workers eligible for early retirement benefits are dropping out of the labor force. Growing concerns about the adequacy of retirement savings and whether people will have enough money to live comfortably in retirement, magnified by the 2008 stock market collapse, appear to have discouraged early retirement. Instead, more older workers are now remaining in the labor force and searching for work after they lose their jobs. The need for older adults to keep working raises the imperative for new policies that help address the special challenges that older job seekers face.

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