Off The Charts: Number of Those Working Past 65 Is at a Record High

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
Labor Department figures indicate that the percentage of workers over the traditional retirement age of 65 is at a record high. But, the figures show, job totals fell sharply for men under 55 during the recession and have only started to recover, while the proportion of women ages 25 to 54 with jobs also slid and is close to the lowest level of the last two decades.

“The fact of the matter is that this aging-but-not-yet-aged segment of the baby boomer class can’t afford to retire,” said David A. Rosenberg, the chief economist of Gluskin Sheff, a Canadian firm, noting that overall household net worth was 15 percent lower than at the prerecession peak. “Dreams of the 5,000-square-foot McMansion being a viable retirement asset have morphed into nightmares of a deflationary ball and chain.”

The accompanying charts show the percentage of various age groups with jobs since the end of 2006, when the overall percentage of people with jobs hit its cyclical peak. Each of the charts has a different range, but the same spread between the top and the bottom, so that a move of a given size represents the same gain or loss in percentage points.

For the first time since the government began keeping track of the numbers in 1981 — and probably the first time ever — one in nine American men over the age of 75 was working in April. About one in 20 women over that age have jobs.

The government collects the statistics from a monthly survey of about 60,000 households. Because the pool of older people is relatively small, the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not try to measure seasonal patterns. The figure shown in each chart for workers over 55 is the average of the 12 most recently monthly surveys. That adjusts for seasonal patterns and smooths out the sometimes volatile data.

For workers under 55, the government does do seasonal calculations. The charts showing the average of men and women in the prime working ages — 25 to 54 — show the seasonally adjusted data as well as the 12-month averages shown for the other categories.

In general, for workers it was better to be older in the current cycle. The employment-to-population ratios are higher now than before the recession began for both men and women in all age groups above 65. More than a third of men ages 65 to 69 are working, as are more than a quarter of women.

But the proportion of both sexes working is down from the peak for all age groups under 60.

As the recovery continues, there is limited evidence that younger workers are starting to benefit. Over the most recent 12 months, the seasonally adjusted proportion of men ages 25 to 34 with jobs rose 2.3 percentage points, to 82.5 percent. The proportion of women in that age group with jobs rose one percentage point, to 68 percent. Those are larger gains over that period than for any other group. But gains for middle-age workers have only started to appear.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

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