Older workers are delaying retirement more and more. But it's causing younger workers to wonder if they're missing out on job advancement because senior roles aren't opening up. Is this true?
American workers are retiring later and later. Since the mid-1980s, the share of employed people 65 and older has close to doubled, and some people think that's a problem. Sarah Gonzalez, with our Planet Money podcast, reports on the debate around our aging workforce.
SARAH GONZALEZ, BYLINE: OK. When people cannot afford to retire, that is one thing. But when they can't afford to and just don't want to, Samuel Moyn, a law and history professor at Yale, says that's unfair to younger workers who want to move up in pay and in position.
SAMUEL MOYN: When older people are hoarding their positions and refusing to retire, they're inhibiting other people from getting what they have acquired – houses and other benefits.
GONZALEZ: And he has a solution for our retirement problem, if you think there is one – mandatory retirement ages.
You think we should force people to retire when they hit a certain age?
GONZALEZ: In the 1970s, about half of all jobs in the U.S. came with an age limit, a date when workers would be forced to leave their jobs, when they hit age 65, then later, age 70.
They'd be like, oh, it's your birthday. You're gone?
One of the ideas was to help freshen up the workforce and bring younger workers in with their newer skills. But in 1986, it became largely illegal to force anyone to retire because of age, though we do still allow age limits for federal firefighters. Air traffic controllers have a mandatory retirement age of 56. For commercial pilots, it's 65. It's a safety thing in these jobs. And Sam thinks that white collar high-paying jobs should also be allowed to force people out, like CEOs, judges, journalists, professors like him.
GONZALEZ: So you're out at 65? You're retiring?
GONZALEZ: Oh, 70. Look at you, you're already…
MOYN: Well, no, but look, we have people who are in their 80s here.
OLIVIA S MITCHELL: Well, you know, 80 is the new 70, and 70 is the new 60.
We called up economist Olivia S. Mitchell at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, told her about Sam Moyn's big idea.
GONZALEZ: As an economist, Olivia fundamentally rejects the assertion that older workers refusing to retire are taking jobs away from younger workers. This is known as the lump of labor fallacy, which is the mistaken belief that there's a fixed amount of work in an economy, like one big lump of jobs that we all fight over and have to share.
