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The economy seems to be turning the corner as vaccination rates rise. But the impact of the pandemic on older workers has been great.
The rates of job loss and premature retirement for workers in their 60s have been steeper than during the Great Recession a decade ago, according to a recent report by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Using Census Bureau data, the report examines job losses and the extent to which they led to outright retirement among older workers.
The analysis looks at two age groups: workers in their 50s and 60s.
For workers in their 50s, the main impact of the pandemic has been joblessness, not retirement a result that isn t surprising considering the younger age of this group. The largest impact among this cohort is on low-income workers, but high-income workers have been hit at a rate nearly as high as the Great Recession.
Fewer retirees are claiming Social Security at 62
But unemployment resulting from Covid could temporarily reverse that positive trend.
May 27, 2021 3 MINS
The percentage of Social Security recipients who file for benefits at the earliest age of 62 has been declining steadily for decades. That’s a positive trend for American retirement security since benefits increase for each year a recipient postpones filing for Social Security up to age 70.
But the decline in applications at the earliest claiming age may be more dramatic than previously published Social Security Administration data suggest. A new study by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College says a better metric for capturing claiming behavior over time when the population is aging is the share of all workers turning age 62 who claim at 62. The CRR researchers note that the number of men who turned 62 has more than doubled from 829,000 in 1997 to about 1.7 million in 2019.