The Pace of Boomer Retirements Has Accelerated in the Past Year

More than 70 million Baby Boomers reside in the U.S. Since the time that the oldest Boomers reached age 65, there has been public interest in their impact on the nation’s labor force, public social insurance programs and asset values. The COVID-19 recession resulted in a large and sharp employment contraction across generations. This analysis looked at whether retirements had accelerated among Boomers during the pandemic.

The COVID-19 outbreak has affected data collection efforts by the U.S. government in its surveys, especially limiting in-person data collection. This resulted in about a 4 percentage point decrease in the response rate for the CPS in September 2020. It is possible that some measures of retirement and labor market activity and its demographic composition are affected by these changes in data collection.