40 Percent of Retired Americans Say They Would Rejoin the Workforce, If Hours Were More Flexible

A study published in the American Economic Journal may offer clues for halting an economic downturn driven by mass U.S. workforce retirements, reports Forbes . Economists led by the Vanguard Group's John Ameriks determined an absence of job flexibility to be a key driver of older Americans' departure from the labor pool. "For many, labor force participation near or after normal retirement age is limited more by a lack of acceptable job opportunities or low expectations about finding them than by unwillingness to work longer," said the researchers. A survey of 2,772 individuals revealed a strong, pervasive desire for employment among older Americans. "One third of current non-workers . . . report being willing to work again at the time of the survey, even if they could not choose the number of hours worked, as long as they could find a job that has similar characteristics to the last job they had," the team noted. "Many of them also report being willing to take a significant wage reduction to have such a job opportunity. Allowing for flexibility not only increases the acceptance rate at the reference wage (by 20 percentage points at the time of the survey), it also increases the wage reduction workers are willing to accept."