Monday Morning Optimism 4/17/23

Old men and retirement

Welcome to our Monday Morning Optimism series. To start each week, we’ll send you an economic trend/fact/idea that shows how some aspect of the economy (or world) has improved over time.

In 1901, roughly 65% of men aged 65+ were either working or looking for work. That share fell pretty sharply over the next century and hit the all-time low of 15.6% in 1993. It rebounded a little since that time and, as of 2022, stood at 23.7%, but that still suggests a huge increase in the share of workers aged 65+ who are retired.

(If you’re wondering why this post only covers men, we kind of talked about women’s labor force dynamics in an earlier Monday Morning Optimism post.)

Sure, having more retirees comes with costs (namely related to SSA), but there are about 13.7 million men aged 65+ who would be working at the 1901 labor force participation rate who are instead retired.

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