Are More Older People Working?

For a happy Labor Day experience, I accompanied my wife to do something that is unnatural for me: go shopping. We both remarked on the older age of the workers we encountered, as well as their positive attitudes about working on a holiday. Being an older worker who sneaked back to work this Labor Day, I looked up a report on older workers in the Bureau of Labor Statistics (a great resource). Their last comprehensive study, published in 2008, found: “Between 1977 and 2007, employment of workers 65 and over increased 101 percent, compared to a much smaller increase of 59 percent for total employment (16 and over). The number of employed men 65 and over rose 75 percent, but employment of women 65 and older increased by nearly twice as much, climbing 147 percent. While the number of employed people age 75 and over is relatively small (0.8 percent of the employed in 2007), this group had the most dramatic gain, increasing 172 percent between 1977 and 2007.” My hunch? Those trends have accelerated from 2008 to the present. The study is here: http://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2008/older_workers/