The Kubera Principle

The Book That Will Change the World

An uncomfortable amount of the 45-and-over crowd have been forced to take jobs at the Home Depot or accept gig-economy-type roles, just to pay the bills and get health insurance. A large percentage have just given up on the job hunt and called it a day. Sadly, the experienced people were unceremoniously pushed out of the job market and did not leave on their own volition.

A new study from the Schwartz Center for Economics at the New School, entitled, ‘The March 2022 Status of Older Workers Report,’ showed that during the pandemic “many older workers did not leave their jobs voluntarily but got pushed out of the labor force.”

The retired population in America between ages 55 and 74 has boomed since March 2020. A lot of this was by force, not choice. More than one million people in this demographic left the job market. The number of those who retired involuntarily a year after losing a job was 10 times higher than pre-pandemic times, the report found.

The study indicates that workers didn’t leave the job market because of the Great Resignation. It was the Great kick-out-the-door. Things haven’t improved that much, despite a hot job market. The research shows that some older workers are returning, but “these flows do not make up for excess retirement.”

The numbers paint a bleak picture for the experienced workers. In March 2020, there were 35 million older workers who were gainfully employed. Only one month later, around 3.8 million workers ages 55 to 74, (11 percent of all workers in that age group), lost their jobs.

A year later, 400,000 workers in this cohort retired due to the inability to find a suitable job. By comparison, in a pre-pandemic environment, the number of people in this demographic retiring would be about 180,000.

Those older workers who remained employed were more likely to postpone retirement during this period, as they’ve seen what happened to their contemporaries.

It would seem that a person who was pushed into retirement, now has a good chance of finding a new role as there are more than eleven million jobs open, a record setting high. However, it’s not so simple.