Jobless Rate Drops Because Retirement Rate Increases? (IRA)

The number of people unemployed last month declined to 8.6 percent, down from 9.4 percent a year ago. On the one hand, this is good news — job creation, it seems, is on the rise — but the situation is a good deal more complex than the numbers show. As an army of baby boomers approaches retirement, some who have found themselves unemployed have opted to enter retirement early rather than seek to re-enter a still stagnant workforce. The rate of unemployment also decreases when someone who is receiving unemployment benefits decides to stop looking for work, a group that totaled 315,000 people over the course of the past year.