Retirees Returning to the Workforce—Can Older Americans Resolve the Labor Shortage?
The U.S. labor shortage will not be easing up any time soon, warned Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell in November. One of the reasons for the immense gap in the national job market has been the surge in retirements since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.
A Nov. 2022 report by the central bank revealed that the retired share of the U.S. population, which was more than 1 percent above the pre-pandemic level, has accounted for almost all of the shortfall in the labor force participation rate.
The Fed paper also concluded that “more than half of the increase in the retired share are ‘excess retirements’ that would likely not have occurred in the absence of the pandemic.”…