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By: FEDweek StaffThe high demand for workers likely will result in only a moderate increase in retirees returning to work, the Center for Retirement Research has said in a study of what it called “unretirement.”
“With the U.S. economy currently facing a labor shortage, the potential return of these retirees to the workforce is an important question. On the one hand, it seems likely that many retired workers could be enticed to return given that the job opening rate is at an all-time high. On the other hand, it is possible that retirement is not a choice easily undone,” it said in defining the issue.
It said that long-term, relatively few retirees return to work—only about 6 percent on average—and when they do so, “returning to work was often part of a plan right from the start, after taking time off from a prior job to recover from burnout.”
Prior studies have found that retirees are less likely to return to work when the job market is tight but have not focused on whether they are more likely when it is open as today, it said. Comparing rates of unretirement with job opening rates, it said there is a “statistically significant, though relatively small” impact. At today’s rates, it said, that would translate into about 2 percentage points more unretirements than the average.
“A more meaningful reentry of retired workers into the labor market would represent a break in the pattern observed over the past several decades. Then again, in these strange times, when a labor market recovery could also be accompanied by more opportunities to work remotely, such a break does not seem impossible,” it said.
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