The real American retirement crisis: Too many seniors are working or poor

[eridani]

http://www.epi.org/publication/the-real-american-retirement-crisis-too-many-seniors-are-working-or-poor/

Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute claims there is no retirement crisis in the United States. Citing a recent report showing that senior incomes are high relative to other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Biggs downplays the fact that many American seniors are not retired: 30 percent of 65- to 69-year-olds in the United States are employed, versus 20 percent in OECD countries on average. This ranks the United States eighth amon35 OECD countries in the share of 65- to 69-year-olds who are employed.er OECD countries tend to see larger declines in employment for workers in their 60s. France, for example, has the same employment rate for workers in their late 50s as the United States, but a much lower employment rate for workers in their late 60s. Senior incomes are closer to working-age incomes in the United States than in other OECD countries because the decline in the employment rate for workers in their late 50s to their late 60s is smaller. Biggs cites this fact as evidence that the U.S. retirement system is working, but it actually reflects the fact that fewer Americans are retiring.

It’s possible that American seniors enjoy working more than their counterparts in Europe and Canada. However, a less benign explanation for why Americans are less likely to retire is that our retirement system replaces a lower share of pre-retirement income. Due to high income inequality, the United States also has a high senior poverty rate. This situation is likely to get worse, as many seniors today receive traditional pensions in addition to Social Security, whereas tomorrow’s seniors will rely more heavily on inadequate 401(k) plans.

[global1]

1. Very Few Of Us Can Afford To Retire....

Many were wiped out or never recovered from the crash. Others are at the mercy of Wall St and their jumpy swings in the market. Everybody has their hand in our back pockets. Prices on everything are rising. We get less of most things for more money. It's no wonder why more of us are still working.

[Sherman A1]

2. Precisely

Well said!

[Bohunk68]

3. I relate, as a low-income senior.

I have looked for part-time work in my rural area, but alas, nothing out there. But, I stay active by doing lots of volunteer work for many causes, several of which are senior-connected. Now, if I were recompensed just for the time I (and many other seniors, I might add) put into my community, I would be comfortable and not worried as to whether or not I can pay for my firewood.

[Le Taz Hot]

17. Check with the Census Bureau.

Besides counting everyone every 10 years they do LOTS of surveys. Go to www.census.gov and check the jobs section. They're always looking for Field Representatives and if you happen to be bilingual, that is a plus, though not mandatory. When you fill out the application indicate that you are available 7 days a week and that you have a car. Sometimes the hiring process takes awhile, sometimes not, but once you get your name in the hopper at some point the will call you.

[Bohunk68]

18. Thank you. I had gone through the process of working with them during the census, however,

since at that time, my discharge had not been upgraded, I was not hired. My discharge has just been upgraded recently which makes that a possibility.

[LittleGirl]

4. example

I have a friend that has worked for small businesses all her life and never had a 401k or pension plan. She has about 3k saved for retirement and was unemployed for 3 yrs between 2010 and 2013. She's 54 and is hoping that her elderly parents will leave her some money when they die so that she has that safety net. She works for the state of AZ processing claims for food stamps and welfare recipients now. She hopes she won't be one of them (again) as she was qualified for it while she was unemployed.

[SheilaT]

34. Now that she works for the state government,

she ought to have the possibility of a decent pension if she stays on the job. Plus, for all those years she worked for small businesses she should at least have Social Security coming in eventually.

No 401k or pension plan is very unfortunate, and I do have to wonder why she had three full years of unemployment. Yes, I know we were in a recession, but there are still jobs out there. Crappy jobs, but paid employment nonetheless.

However, she is only 54, and with any luck at all will be able to wind up with something, rather than nothing.

[SmittynMo]

5. Seniors are screwed

I don't care how much you saved when you worked. It was most likely wiped out by Wall street 8 years ago. If you were in your late 40's- to late 50's, odds are you were probably laid off. I suspect most never recovered. And finding another job was close to impossible. I've pretty much given up at 61. It's very tough surviving, and even tougher finding a job. And I have to wait 1 more year to get my social security at 62. So now I am forced to take a much lower SS payment (62 instead of 65), just to survive. If that's what you call it. It wasn't suppose to be this way. I am willing to say that most here have a similar situation. It sucks being a senior today.

[SheilaT]

38. Have you not noticed that the market has rebounded

rather strongly since 2008?

Of course, if you sold at the bottom and stood to the side fretting while the market went back up, then you probably don't have anything. But staying in is always the best course.

I am better off financially than eve before of that.

As to finding a job, it does depend a huge amount on what you're willing to do, and if you're willing to do entry level work, there are jobs out there. And if you can earn anything at all, you're better off doing that than collecting Social Security at the earliest possible age.

[wickerwoman]

43. Not everyone's experience is the same as yours.

Depending on your field, the market rebounding may or may not have anything to do with your ability to get a job.

Not everyone had a choice about selling at the bottom. If you don't have a job and can't make the mortgage payment, you don't have the luxury of taking your wise advice about staying the course.

Bully for you that you're better off financially. What's your point other than smugly rubbing it in to people not as fortunate as you?

I was unemployed for four year after the GFC. There were no jobs. I couldn't get a job at McDonalds. I couldn't get a shitty two month Christmas contract with Fed Ex. Seven hundred people turned up to that interview for four seasonal positions. WalMart wouldn't even take my application. There was no temp work. I sent out more than 860 applications and had more than 40 interviews before I finally got a job. So anyone that says "You could have gotten a job in 2009 if you really wanted one" is talking out of their ass.

Things are better now, but once you're knocked flat on your back and have nothing recovering takes decades. I'm only where I am now because I took out huge student loans and retrained and was lucky and look young and was in my early 30s when the crisis hit so I didn't face age-discrimination after I got my new degree. Paying off those student loans means there's no way I'll pay off a mortgage even on a very modest home before I'm 65. This year is the first time in eight years I've been able to afford anything beyond absolute bare necessities and I've had a steady full time job that pays in the top 25% income bracket for four years. If I was ten years older when the crisis hit, I would not have recovered in time to ever retire even if I'd been able to find a job again.

[Omaha Steve]

6. I'm lucky

I have a union pension. I've been retired for 14 months.

K&R!

OS

[shanti]

19. yes, you are very lucky for that

i give thanks every day for my union pension. it's the MAIN reason i worked for the state for 21 years. it's been 5 years now, the time has really gone by fast.

[HughBeaumont]

7. "Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute" Aaaaaaand I stopped reading THAT point.

AEI will say and do anything to excuse the overlords and blame the workers. Their stooges are frequently on CNBC, contain your shock.

I feel this is a problem America needs to solve and solve fast, lest you want the job market to be stagnant for many decades. Generation X is slowly creeping up there when it comes to retirement, and let me tell you something . . . anyone who thinks WE have near the multiple hundreds of thousands IT'S going to take for us to get out of the workforce . . . not even close, bub.

Like I said before, I think the pre-boomer generation were the last to have a comfortable retirement thanks to pensions. Between the multiple Wall Street shenanigans in the late 80s to 2008, the 401(k) Ruse screwed the Boomer's nest eggs eight ways until Sunday.

[MisterP]

23. like "Randal O'Toole of the Cato Institute"

[Wellstone ruled]

32. Like you,Enterprise Insitute(More Bullsh=t from the Koch Bros),all I needed to know.

Been retired for dozen years,but,flunked it five times so far. Trying not to do it again. Worked Part Time at a DIY Store. Quit five times,son of guns kept calling to see when I could come in and fill out a app so we can get you back. Finally changed our phone number,hey,been two years,kinda getting use to it.

[tokenlib]

8. And this is why we need Bernie instead of Third Way Hillary...

A lot of us really are going to need Social Security. Expanded and not slashed/ "reformed". They talk about the swelling support for Bernie of those under 35 years of age. It's time for those over 35 to realize the Third Way corporatists and conservatives just don't get it.. or they do and they just don't care.

[Helen Borg]

9. I think there is nothing wrong per se with working at 69...

If you are in decent shape. In fact, there is evidence that may be good for your cognitive abilities and to retain functionality. Lots of people really deteriorate after they retire and start doing nothing all day. It depends on the job, really. But the point is that the system should be set up in such a way that if you CANNOT work at that age, then you'll still have a decent life.

[haele]

20. No, but it should be a choice to work. Not a requirement to maintain a basic standard of living.

Back in the bad old days, pre-FDR and Social Security, farmers and business owners would slowly turn over their farms and businesses to their heirs (child or business partner) with the understanding that they and their spouse/dependents would continue to have some support from that business until they died. However, if you worked for said farmer or business owner, you worked until the day you couldn't go to work any more and that was that.
Hopefully, in those situations, you would have a well-off spouse, kids, or other family that would be willing to take you in after whatever you were able to save or inherit from your older family members was spent. Or you died quickly. In fact, dying at work was not unusual for older workers, especially clerical workers who were desk bound most of their career.

Heck, 10 years ago at a government facility, we came to work on a Monday and found the 71 year old retired military writer who lived alone but was still just scraping by as a GS7 (salary: $30K a year at that time, but San Diego is expensive, and he was paying a mortgage) who had stayed late to finish up a report on Friday and died at his desk.
Last email he sent was to his boss around 1840 (6:40 PM) indicating he was tired and would finish it up Monday morning. The last person who saw him alive had left ten minutes earlier told the investigator there was no one else left in the cubicle areas, and since we had no weekend cleaners, there was no one who knew anything happened until the first person coming in Monday morning went near his desk to wake him up and smelled something terribly wrong.

There are still too many people who should be in the position to choose/discover alternate work to define themselves by and enjoy as they grow older, rather than hold positions of employment that should frankly be opening up to younger workers who are trying to establish their career and retirement.

It sounds horrible, and I'm coming up on that age myself, but along with the good that experience brings to a job site, there's also a lot of accommodation to the more elderly workforce due to the increasing physical limitations that come with aging. A good option would be to have the flexibility that can allow an older worker who lives for his work to come in like the earlier elderly farmer or business owner did to come in and "oversee" his or her legacy work and help out the younger workers who need that job to support their families - in exchange for a decent standard of living for the rest of his/her lifetime.

And then, there's people who just want to relax and explore the world outside the work they had to do to maintain their families and households when they were younger. Who never really loved or identified with the work they ended up doing to make an income. And they also should have the choice to do that, and not have to worry about how to make ends meet when they're ready to quit working and do something else.

But none of this can happen in the US as "society" is structured now, with its Calvinist philosophy (i.e., wealth and ease means you're blessed by God, and poverty and struggle means you're a sinful person that God is punishing).

Our economy is more profit-driven than resource optimization-driven; the elderly are only as profitable as the money that can be sucked from them. Any benefit from wisdom, experience, or talent they may have is offset by the cost of the accommodations that need to be made for their age. If they or their families can't or won't "pay" for their limitations, then the current society would rather throw them away. And that's a bad, stressful place for the elderly - or anyone - to be in.

Haele

[Helen Borg]

25. I agree...

[Delphinus]

31. Wonderfully stated!

Thank you for this well-thought out response.

[Vinca]

10. What's wrong with working?

Many of us want to work and not just for the money. I'm just not the golf course/Sun City type. It would bore me. To be fair, I'm self-employed and it's fun. I can't imagine being held hostage in a cubicle after my retirement date passes.

[meaculpa2011]

16. Same here. Self employed and I love my work. n/t

[sorefeet]

11. Another right wing nut ball is

running for Governor of Montana this year and he say that retirement is off the table. NOWHERE in the Bible does it mention retirement. Noah was 600 years old when he built the ark, so man does not retire. His name is Gianforte. Multi-millionaire right wing bible thumper who never worked an honest day in his life would destroy any pension he could, if elected. No need to retire, the end times are here the good people go to heaven with the streets paved in gold.

[randys1]

33. SC is gonna put final nail in the coffins of unions today. GOP and repubs hate working people

And yet the vast majority of GOP are working people.

Weird that.

[Javaman]

12. I'm having a coffin installed under my desk...

the concept of retirement doesn't exist in my mind.

[NBachers]

37. Yup- that's pretty much it. Drop dead at work, and there are people around who have to deal with it.

[Javaman]

41. not sure what you mean by your second comment, but maybe I wasn't clear...

I won't be able to afford to retire, i have to work until I'm dead.

[NBachers]

42. I'm in pretty much the same boat. I'll be 67 soon; can't think of quitting 'till 70, and will

probably keep working long past that. I'm lucky enough to work for a company that values it's older employees.

I just figure that if I die at work, then work will handle the leftovers.

It's a grim attempt at gallows humor to point out what's wrong with a system that can't make life a little better for it's elders.

[libodem]

13. .

http://countercurrentnews.com/2014/02/food-stamp-capital-of-the-u-s-is-white-and-republican/

[KG]

14. I'm gonna have to work till i die. lessen i meet some rich widder lay...

it was a bi-partisan effort.

[mnhtnbb]

15. My husband is 73 and still working part-time, by choice, but has some

developing health issues that may force him to retire. That is going to be a tough day around here because his identity
is really tied up in his work (he's a psychiatrist/psychoanalyst) and he's always thought he'd work at least part-time until he died.
Fortunately, he has a pension from the Feds for all the years he spent working part-time for the VA Hospitals.

I'm eligible for Medicare myself on my next birthday and started collecting my SS when I was 62. We aren't drawing funds from my IRA--yet--but its value is off 8% from its high
last year and I'm seriously thinking of converting some of the investments in it into cash (when in the past I would buy when it was
off 8-10% which is how I made up for the hit it took during the last recession). I'm not sure I have a 5 year time line on it to recoup paper
losses at this point, but I really, really, hate to book the loss on it now.

[FLPanhandle]

21. Before my wife and I had children, I calculated each child would mean 5 years of extra work

Assuming costs to raise them, my wife quitting and being a stay at home mom, college, automobiles, etc.

Two kids = 10 more years of work.

I look around at people with 4 or 5 children and know they are working until they die.

[haele]

28. Try being a grandparent guardian. I can't quit.

She's the future, and if we didn't have guardianship and take over the majority of the costs of her upkeep and education, she wouldn't be getting the opportunities and emotional support that her struggling parents (who are basically kids themselves) can't to afford to give her. She'd be at least two years behind in development this year if left to them to raise - and we don't spoil her with toys, cute new clothes and video games like the other grandparents do.

We just feed her, get her to school and help with home-work, give her a larger, quieter, less chaotic place to live, and teach her things like cleaning, sewing, cooking, music, art, using tools for fixing and building, and reading.
I'm 5grmbl years old, and unless she becomes a child prodigy, I'll be 68 when she graduates high school and starts college, if that's what she wants to do. So yes, in the current economy, I'll be working until the day I die.

Haele

[FLPanhandle]

40. Ouch

It's a huge sacrifice but good on you for caring for her enough to do it.

[One_Life_To_Give]

22. 20% would not have reached "full" SS retirement

Of the 65-69yr olds. 20% have not reached full retirement benefits which occur at age 66 and none would have reeached their maximum SS payment which is at age 70. That certainly has some impact on the decisions of people to continue working in their late 60's.

[Matariki]

24. God help us if the stock market crashes the year we're supposed to retire

What a set up

[KamaAina]

26. Too many seniors and non-seniors are working AND poor

[Siwsan]

27. I took an early retirement, and now they want me to come back to work

I'm not surprised because they made no provisions for me leaving, even though I gave them a ONE YEAR notice! It is just part time, and only for a few months so I look at it as a bonus income I wasn't expecting, and a little more financial padding because I was way too young to retire, in the first place.

And since they also made none of the personnel changes I suggested that might have delayed my retirement (an aggressive, bullying co-worker whom someone is protecting), if it is more trouble than it is worth, I can just walk away.

[Delphinus]

35. That

is quite a lucky predicament.

[Siwsan]

36. I know! And right out of the blue!

I don't miss my old job, one bit, but my friends who are still there are in a real bind AND the money will go straight into an 'emergency' fund. Best of all, they are pretty much willing to let me call the shots as to when I work, and who I work with so hopefully I won't have to deal with the 'evil one'. Although I have no doubt she will be pretty pissed that I'm back. She considered me to be another 'notch on her belt.'

[hunter]

29. Thank gawds I have past experience as a homeless person.

[Trajan]

30. 24 years of an aerospace pension ...

Along with a full Social Security disbursement, coming at age 66.33 years old ...

Some 7 years to go ....

I would be very scared without it ...

[Octafish]

39. Wealthiest times in HUMAN HISTORY.

Thanks to their toadies in Washington DC, the wealthy in this country are getting away with murder.