New Social Security retirement enrollments experienced a significant +5.01% spike in 2023, marking the largest single-year growth rate since the conclusion of the recession wave in 2009.
Peak Baby Boom started in 1957 and ended in 1961, with an average of 4.3 million births in each of the five years.
If you were born in January 1957, you reached full retirement age in July 2023 and were eligible for your first payment in August 2023. A person born in December 1961 is eligible for their first payment in December 2028.
This means the new exodus out of the labor force and into retirement and into the not-in-labor-force category will last from mid-2023 into 2029, a tsunami crashing out of the economy as these individuals become 66+ and 67 years old in their turn. Full retirement age is 66+6 months for 1957 (2023+), 66+8 months for 1958 (2024+), 66+10 months for 1959 (2025+), and 67 years for 1960 and 1961 (2027, 2028).
This exodus will combine with AI to incentivize reductions in force in corporate America, and we're already witnessing it.
For 2024-26 to date, layoffs have been running ~766k/yr on average annualized ahead of the average 20 million layoffs per year. Announced corporate job cuts late 2024-25 were ~720k, the highest in 15 years.
Trump reductions in force for the federal government at ~250k net contribute but are a sideshow by comparison.
Perhaps fortunately, the Baby Bust of 1973-1976, when annual births crashed to multi-decade lows of 3.1 million per year, means fewer people in their fifties exist to be victimized by AI like Baby Boomers were victimized by the Great Recession in 2009.
But the shrinking talent pool snaking its way through the economy may also be a reason driving AI in the first place.
The problem of unintended consequences is inescapable.
One thing we could fix though is "disabled workers". The Dot Com Bust and The Great Recession didn't suddenly disable anybody, but that's what the data shows.
They exploited a chink in the armor of the Social Security system, and are one big reason the system is teetering.
The Bush and Obama administrations both let it happen because they wouldn't, or couldn't, address the consequences of job loss in a straightforward manner, so they burdened the system instead with a wink, a nod, and an averting of the gaze.
Well, just look at the damn thing. ↓
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| Rush Limbaugh's 106.189 million eating, but not working, a new high, in Trump's America! |
