The Joint Economic Committee?(JEC)?held a?hearing?entitled “Building a Better Labor Market: Empowering Older Workers for a Stronger Economy”?to examine the?challenges older workers face—which have been magnified by the pandemic—and how public policy can address them to strengthen the labor market?and promote economic growth.? JEC Chairman Don Beyer (D-VA) presided.? 

Prior to the pandemic, older Americans contributed an estimated 40% of the national economic output—despite comprising just 35% of the population—and the share of older workers has almost doubled in the past 20 years—a trend that was set to continue.  

But just as companies have historically used downturns to prune workplaces of older workers, the same appears to be true of the coronavirus recession:  

• At least 1.7 million more older workers than expected retired due to the pandemic recession.
• For the first time in 50 years, the unemployment rate for older workers was higher than that of mid-career workers, and although the rates have stabilized, older workers remain overrepresented among those who are currently long-term unemployed. 
• The labor market effects have been particularly harmful for older Black workers and those without a college degree.  

The experience of older workers during the coronavirus pandemic is emblematic of the long-standing challenges they have faced as decades of reduced bargaining power, sluggish wage growth, increasingly strenuous and dangerous jobs, and insufficient care infrastructure have reduced job quality and eroded retirement security. Today, the typical worker in the United States has?no retirement savings, and among those who do, the typical amount falls short of the recommended savings target necessary to maintain a pre-retirement standard of living. 

“Despite media coverage of high-income older workers choosing retirement to spend more time on hobbies and with their families, evidence shows this is not the reality for many older workers,” Chairman Beyer, Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee. “As the United States continues its strong recovery, a primary task before us in Congress must be answering how we can build a stronger and more resilient economy, where the benefits from economic growth are broadly shared. Key to such an economy is a better labor market that ensures all workers, including older workers, have access to quality jobs that meet their needs and are free from discrimination.”? 

“Equalizing healthy retirement times was an achievement Americans forgot to celebrate,” stated Teresa Ghilarducci, Irene and Bernard L Schwartz Professor of Economics and Policy Analysis at The New School for Social Research. “The practical ability and social right to retire is becoming more contingent on whether a person is disabled or has saved enough. No one else, it seems, is deserving. One of the signature achievements of the post-WWII period—the democratization of who has control over the pace and content of their time after a lifetime of work—is being reversed.”  

“Early retirements affect a country’s productive capacity not just by reducing employment and work hours, but also from the loss of human capital,” explained Monique Morrissey, Economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “This is especially problematic when the affected workers are directly involved in caring for, educating, and protecting the current and future workforce and providing other critical services. We should therefore be very concerned about a wave of early retirements among educators, nurses, postal workers, and other public-sector workers.” 

“Older workers are vital to their families, to our communities and to our economy,” testified Jocelyn Frye, President of the National Partnership for Women and Families. “But all too often, older workers, particularly older women workers, are missing from public conversations about how to support workers, improve workplaces, and strengthen our economy. In the instances when older workers are mentioned, their stories are frequently over-simplified and incomplete with the diverse, divergent experiences of older workers reduced to a single, rosy soundbite about rising stock and housing values – on average – that supposedly lead to comfortable retirements that last forever. But this under-inclusive narrative misses the mark and has the effect of ignoring the experiences of too many workers.”