In One Year, Pandemic Forced Millions of Workers to Retire Early

AARP reports that a disproportionate number of older Americans pushed out of the workforce by the pandemic and recession are taking earlier retirement. "Older workers, millions of them, are going to be downwardly mobile from the comforts of middle-class life," said The New School's Teresa Ghilarducci. The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College found that older Americans are more likely than mid-career workers to be out of work now, while a poll from the National Institute for Retirement Security said more than a quarter of all workers say COVID-19 has driven them to move up their retirement date. The New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis estimates that nearly 2 million older workers have left the labor force permanently since the pandemic began, which means the number of older workers still employed is down by about 5 percent, versus less than 2 percent for workers ages 35 to 54. The most affected group is lower-income older workers. Unemployment for those with lower-paying jobs and for Black, Hispanic, and Asian older workers has been more than twice that of higher-income older workers during the crisis.