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Employment and Retirement Among Older Workers During the Covid-19 Pandemic

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Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic upended labor markets and prompted a sharp increase in the share of U.S. adults who are retired. This paper uses Current Population Survey data to explore the distribution and determinants of employment and retirement among older workers during the pandemic. Employment declines among older workers were greatest for low-earning, non-white, and non-college-educated workers. By contrast, increased transitions to retirement occurred more evenly across demographic groups and concentrated in both the lowest- and highest-earning quartiles. Job characteristics that best predicted increased pandemic retirement transitions were employment in high-contact occupations and part-time work schedules. I estimate that part-time workers made up roughly 70% of the increase in net year-to-year employment-to-retirement transitions during the first year of the pandemic. This finding has implications for recent Social Security claiming behavior and for the possible persistence of the pandemic retirement boom.

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  • Owen Davis, 2021. "Employment and Retirement Among Older Workers During the Covid-19 Pandemic," SCEPA working paper series. 2021-06, Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA), The New School.
    • Handle: RePEc:epa:cepawp:2021-06
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    Cited by:

    1. Claryn S. J. Kung & Jingmin Zhu & Paola Zaninotto & Andrew Steptoe, 2023. "Changes in retirement plans in the English older population during the COVID-19 pandemic: The roles of health factors and financial insecurity," European Journal of Ageing, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 1-12, December.
    2. Owen Davis & Siavash Radpour, 2021. "Dissecting the Pandemic Retirement Surge," SCEPA policy note series. 2021-03, Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA), The New School.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    older workers; retirement; labor supply; Covid-19;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • I14 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Inequality
    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion
    • J38 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Public Policy
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • J83 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Standards - - - Workers' Rights
    • J32 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Nonwage Labor Costs and Benefits; Retirement Plans; Private Pensions

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