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September 09, 2020 at 07:53 PM
In recent years, Americans have been trying to work to older ages, many in order to ensure a secure retirement, according to a new brief from Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research.
In order for this strategy to succeed, the brief noted, “it is not enough that people are willing to work — employers must also be willing to hire them on good terms.”
The brief explores what jobs employers really want older workers to do, with both positive findings and less reassuring ones.
How prevalent is the trend toward working to older ages?
A recent SimplyWise survey, conducted this summer just as the coronavirus outbreak was reigniting in the U.S., found that 72% of Americans planned to work in retirement, a five percentage point increase from three months earlier.
Those intending to work past retirement presumably included many among the 20% of survey respondents in their 60s who said they had been furloughed or lost their job because of the virus-forced lockdown.
Hiring Older Workers
Boston College researchers compared job postings on RetirementJobs.com, a website for older workers, with those on a large general jobs site for workers of all ages, CareerBuilder.com, and the federal government’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), which aggregates statistics on job openings.
The brief noted that although RetirementJobs.com is much smaller than other job sites, it is the only one that segments by age and thereby offers a picture of the jobs available to older workers.
