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A meme persists among young workers who see the hamster wheel of buying a home, saving money, building wealth, and retiring as an increasingly distant goal. “I can never quit my job.”
But new data released this week by the New York Fed reveals that the number of workers who expect to continue working past age 62 has plummeted.
This week's chart below shows that the number of New York Fed survey respondents who expect to continue working past age 62 was 45.8% in March, down from 55.4% four years ago. ing. Also, only 31.2% of workers expect to work beyond age 67, down from 36.2% four years ago.
Economists at the New York Fed found that these expectations were broadly expressed across age, education, and income groups, but were especially pronounced among women.
The New York Fed does not know why this change occurred. But the bank's economists say these factors may be influenced by factors such as part-time or freelance employment, wealth, future income, financial confidence or, on the flip side of optimism, expectations about reaching expected age. He cites the possibility of prioritizing a lack of self-confidence. result.
That the reasons can be both “YOLO” and its progressive opposite will only make these expectations even more widely accepted. But it also highlights the sheer uncertainty of the future, especially in the face of the potential job paradigm shift brought about by AI and automation across all sectors. Innovations that make it possible to work a 10-hour work week or stay hungry.
Almost every graph charting the trajectory of the labor market over the past five years has clearly been shaped by the pandemic.
As businesses closed and reopened, the number of unemployed and healed workers skyrocketed. Then came the “mass resignations,” when more people than usual decided to quit their jobs during the post-pandemic hiring frenzy.
Both aspects of this demand and supply reversal remain contributing factors to the inflation debate that defines this economic moment. And this rapid shift in people's retirement expectations could also reshape economic trends and turn known challenges into big problems.
“To the extent that these expectations indicate actual future retirement behavior, they also influence consumers' future decisions about when to claim and receive Social Security benefits,” the New York Fed said.
We need to be careful to articulate the costs that will be incurred when millions of people leave the workplace sooner than expected. And that bill may be due sooner than we think.
ethan wolfman He is a senior editor at Yahoo Finance and runs the newsletter. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann.
