36.2% of people 55 and over worked any job in Sep 2026

Employment for people 55 and over is cyclical, peaking in the spring and the fall as this group tends to head south for the winter to beat the cold and north for the summer to beat the heat.

Employment for this group hit its lowest level outside the pandemic in twenty years in July 2026 with just 35.5% working any job. 

 

Every age group in America has lost its work ethic to one degree or another, for one reason or another

The percentage of each age group's population which works is in structural decline:

Teens since 1978 (get a haircut and get a real job); 

College kids since 1989 (because they went to college more and more after that, duh);

Core adults 25-54 since the late 1990s (they keep getting knocked down but they mostly keep getting back up again 👍 -- this is a huge tranche with some people carrying the load more than others, and you know who you are);

Americans 55 and over since 2019 (the Great Recession didn't kill 'em, from which they made more than a nice recovery, but they are not going to recover from the pandemic era for decades to come because Peak Baby Boom turned 62 that year).

  

 

Yes, but it's been all downhill for six years already

 ... There are already a record 11.6 million Americans aged 65 and older still punching the clock. ... today’s elderly may actually be the last generation capable of working until they die on this scale. ...

More.

The percentage of older Americans working peaked in 2019-2020, as Peak Baby Boom 1957 turned 62. It's been all downhill from there.

The phenomenon has been a function of the size of the cohort relative to the overall population. The Baby Boom is like a dead bunny passing through the body of the snake.

Meanwhile the author fears the jobs these older people do are vulnerable to replacement by AI because they are supposedly overwhelmingly cognitive, so that younger workers will never be able to work until age 67 like many older Americans currently do.

But older workers are a diverse lot, performing a variety of work that can't be dismissed as simply cognitive.

Currently, the top 20 jobs by headcount of workers 55 and over according to the BLS are quite diverse, and categories where growth is expected to one degree or another in green outnumber those where stagnation and decline are expected in red by 3.5:1:

Truck, delivery, tractor trailer drivers 1.3m

Secretaries/admins 1.05m

Registered nurses 1m

Dirty rotten CEOs/senior management 0.95m

Retail supervisors 0.85m

Janitors/cleaners 0.8m

Teachers through grade eight 0.75m

Bean counters/financial managers 0.7m

Retail clerks 0.65m

Personal care aides 0.6m

Farmers/ranchers 0.55m (more than 54% of the industry)

Post-secondary educators 0.5m

Real estate agents 0.45m

Lawyers 0.4m

Property managers 0.35m

Home health aides 0.35m

Bus drivers 0.32m

Maids/housekeepers 0.3m

Billing/posting clerks 0.25m

Religious workers 0.22m.

  

 

It's not job seekers giving up, it's Baby Boomers exiting the stage

 Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation rate falls to lowest in 50 years, outside of Covid era

... in June the biggest plunge came from what is defined as “prime age” workers, or those between the ages of 25 and 54. That rate fell 0.6 percentage point to 83.3%, its lowest since December 2023.

“Looking at the statistics now, that argument doesn’t hold up so well,” North said of the retirement and immigration rationale. “I hate to use the word ‘alarming,’” he added, but said the numbers are cause for concern. ...

 

Alarmed? Really now. This misses the forest for a single tree.

Percent change for the labor participation rate for 25-54s is UP .1 and .2 for 1H2026 and 2H2025 respectively.

For 55s+ it's DOWN 0.8 and .2 respectively.

The 55s+ metric has had NINE semiannual declines since 2019 vs. only three for 25-54s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The former is bleeding participation, while the latter is holding its own.

You can't really appreciate this unless you measure the employment of each group as a percentage of its own population level, from which you can determine how many of them are not working now vs. then.

The number of 55s+ working in 1H2026 and 2H2019 is nearly the same, 37.8 million and 37.6 million respectively, but the former represents only 36% of the group, while the latter represents 39.3%. 

That means that the net additions to the no-longer-working side of the total population of the group since 2019 for 55s+ is now 9.193 million, but doing the same exercise for 25-54s yields a statistically insignificant 215k.

Meanwhile employment as a percentage of its own population for 25-54s, unlike for 55s+, has been and remains stronger now than at any point since the dotcom bubble, averaging 80.64% for forty-two consecutive months.  

The peak year individuals of the Baby Boom, 1957, turned 62 in 2019, when employment of 55s+ naturally peaked too, while the individuals of the final year of the Baby Boom, 1964, turn 62 now in 2026.

We are witnessing the Baby Boom roll over and disappear from the labor statistics. 

The foreign born population works at a rate of 63.26% in June 2026, the native born at only 58.25%

Foreign born workers numbered 30.725 million, native born 131.997 million.

To get native born employment to 63.26% of their own population in June 2026 would require an extra 11.351 million native born suddenly to get jobs.

The best estimates of current illegal alien presence in the United States range between 11 million and 13.7 million.

The percentage of the native born population working continues to fall because it is aging. The share of the 55s and over who work continues to fall, now down to 35.77% of their cohort. 

There are just 26 million people aged 25-54 in the United States who are currently not working. That's where they'd have to come from, a tall order.

 

Another difference between today's young people and the 98 million Americans 55 and over

March 22:

 Feel real-life pain in metaverse!

March 12:

1 in 3 Americans take pain meds every day...

US COVID-19 deaths hit 210,155 today in the Johns Hopkins data set

 

Millions of older workers aged 55-64 have also been driven out of the labor force in the last 20 years by greedy corporations hungry for cheap, foreign labor, aided and abetted by Bush, Obama and now Trump

Average number aged 55-64 "not in labor force"

1999: 9.382 million

2019: 14.638 million

-------------------------

+5.256 million in the last 20 years

There's plenty of labor available, Mr. Trump.

We don't need your cheap foreign scab labor.

Under Trump the big jobs growth has been for 55s and over

Importing cheap labor immigrants only hurts young Americans who need work experience. Older Americans are actually working longer to support their kids who can't get adequate employment.

This is insane.

Employment levels since Trump election in November 2016 through December 2019, seasonally adjusted:

55+:    +8.9%

25-54: +3.4%

20-24: +0.4%

18-19:  -0.2%

Actual increases in levels: 

55+:    +3,086,000

25-54: +3,335,000

20-24:      +55,000

18-19:         -7,000 

The so-called tight labor market is a euphemism for age discrimination by employers

Employers can't find enough young, cheap labor because of declining birth rates, reducing the available pool (blue line year over year growth in decline on an average basis since the mid-1980s, lower than 1% for 20 years).

There's still plenty of older, more expensive labor out there, but employers keep getting rid of them and won't rehire them (red line year over year growth steady between 2-3% for 20 years).

Arbeit macht GDP: At root America's basic economic problems lie at every level in not working enough

There is no age tranche working up to its potential, especially not teenagers, but also not the college-aged, not the core 25 to 54 years, and now not even the over 55 crowd. The latter in fact has only been held up more or less by those over 65 ramping up their participation in the wake of The Great Recession.

It all starts with the phenomenon of "failure to launch" in the teenage years. Baby Boomers didn't simply have fewer children and work less. They had fewer children who also lacked a vigorous work ethic. And that now appears institutionalized in the children of the children as well. This has now rippled through the system, as can be seen in the increasingly later dates for peak average annual participation in the age tranche charts below (1979, 1987, 1997, 2012, and 2016-2017?). GDP will not improve without a cultural reestimation of work. And a return to work will not occur without a need to return, which can only mean one thing:

“from rice paddy to rice paddy in three generations.”

16 to 19

20 to 24

25 to 54

55 and over

65 and over (subset)

Age discrimination update: Unemployment rate for those 55+ estimated to be 12%, 2.5 million want to work but can't get hired

Reported by Reuters, here:

Further, if you add jobless workers who gave up looking after more than four weeks, the 55-plus unemployment rate is a whopping 12 percent, SCEPA [Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at the New School] analysis shows. Looked at another way, 2.5 million older Americans want a job but do not have one.

Junk thought from Mish on labor force, employment and population

Here:

Since April 2008, the population in age group 25-54 declined 0.8%, but the labor force declined 3.6%, and employment declined 4.6%. ...

In the core age 25-54 age group, the population is down 1,053,000 but employment is down a whopping 4,614,000.

Thus, in the 25-54 age group, roughly 3,561,000 people are not working who should be working. The figure is higher if you include other age groups.

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Mish is looking at the issue from a zero-sum perspective which forgets that the age groups have changed in composition over time. Of course employment levels are down. The question is where did it all go, and why did it go there.

The 25-54 age group was full of Baby Boomers in 2008 who in 2014 are now in the 55+ category where the employment level has continued to grow and grow despite the recession. What has happened is that the Baby Boomers in the 25-54 age group have been replaced by subsequent demographic tranches bringing up the rear which were much less numerous because birth rates to Baby Boomers dropped dramatically compared to their parents' era. As a consequence no age group will ever reproduce labor force sizes which match what they were as the Baby Boomers grew up. In fact, the size of the 25-54 group will continue to decline for five more years until all the Baby Boomers cross over to the 55+ group.

The supposed four million+ deficit in employment in the 25-54 age group today can be explained entirely by demographics.

I presented the data here, concluding:

"It appears therefore that the fall-off in the employment level of those 25-54 can be explained entirely by the aging of their cohort in which many millions over the last seven years have moved on to the next level, and by the failure of the younger members of this group to bring up the rear in terms of their aggregate numbers because there just weren't enough of them born. The reason for the decline of their employment level is therefore structural, not economic, and will continue to be so for the next five years.

"Indeed, workers aged 55 and older have escaped a decline in their employment level. There are in fact 6.9 million more working at this age right now in 2014 than there were exactly seven years ago, which is what one would expect from the data. The Baby Boom is simply aging and continuing to work as it did before, and it has a lot of room left to run."

Our brilliant masters raised the cost of youth labor by 41% in the teeth of the financial crisis, decimating their employment by 43%

The current deficit in the general employment level is about 1.55 million below the July 2007 peak (all figures are not-seasonally-adjusted as published by stlouisfed.org). Since the measurement typically is at its highest in the summers, it looks likely that after seven years we are finally going to dig out of this hole this coming summer. Swings up 2 to 4 million from the winter lows to the summer highs are not unusual for this measurement.

That said, deficits in the levels for some age groups remain, and reveal how far behind the employment level remains even as population has increased over the period by an additional 16 million.

The question is why.

Most importantly, workers in the core of the working age population 25-54 years old are today 5.7 million fewer in number than they were at their November 2007 peak, which is the largest deficit by age group.

The oldest of these workers today were born in 1960 when births per 1000 women were still 23.7. The youngest were born in 1989 when births per 1000 women had plummeted to 16.4. But it wasn't until 1965 that births fell below 20 per 1000. That means there are only five tranches left in the measurement today from the high birth rate years 1960-1964 inclusive, whereas seven years ago the picture was a little different. We had seven more high birth rate years represented than we do today. Those aged 54 seven years ago were born in 1953 when births per 1000 were pushing 25. Births per year from 1955 through 1964 reached as high as 4.27 million in 1961. Contrast that with 1973 through 1976 when births crashed to 3.1 million per year, a deficit of 4 million over just those four years compared to the pre-1965 levels.

It appears therefore that the fall-off in the employment level of those 25-54 can be explained entirely by the aging of their cohort in which many millions over the last seven years have moved on to the next level, and by the failure of the younger members of this group to bring up the rear in terms of their aggregate numbers because there just weren't enough of them born. The reason for the decline of their employment level is therefore structural, not economic, and will continue to be so for the next five years.

Indeed, workers aged 55 and older have escaped a decline in their employment level. There are in fact 6.9 million more working at this age right now in 2014 than there were exactly seven years ago, which is what one would expect from the data. The Baby Boom is simply aging and continuing to work as it did before, and it has a lot of room left to run.

If there is an economic problem revealed by the employment level, it has to do with the youngest workers.

Consider teenagers 16-19: 3.2 million fewer teenagers are working today in that age range than at their pre-recession peak in July 2006 at 7.5 million. That's a 43% decline in teenage employment levels in almost 8 years, an utter catastrophe which has nothing to do with demographics. Birth rates have held steady between 1987 and 1998 at 15.4 per 1000.

Unfortunately, teenagers paid the biggest price because in the teeth of the first economic depression in the post-war this country decided it would be a good idea to raise the minimum wage in 2007, again in 2008, and again in 2009. When wages came under severe pressure for every other age group and millions took pay cuts just to keep working, our brilliant masters decided to raise the cost of youth labor by 41% since 2006. And then the dopes voted for a guy who wants to raise the cost of their labor another 39%.

  

College age workers 20-24 by contrast, are in deficit from July 2007 by only 0.8 million.

The declines for the three age groups of 9.7 million minus the gain of 6.9 million for those 55 and older implies a net loss of 2.8 million in the employment level, impacting workers primarily 16-19.

If you want less of something, tax it. And that's what the minimum wage is, a tax on labor which reduces the quantity of it naturally.

Estimating Retirements Added To Those "Not In Labor Force" 2009-2013

It is often forgotten that retired people are classified as not in the labor force. The measure of those "Not in labor force" has grown to a staggering all time high of 92.338 million, not-seasonally-adjusted, as of December 2013.

Between 2009 and 2013 alone, the figure has grown by 11.05 million, and people like Rush Limbaugh thump loudly about all these people "not working" because of the bad economy.

The question is, though, how many of these are retirements?

I say it's theoretically possible that all of them are.

Those turning 66 years of age each year from 2009-2013 were born between 1943 and 1947.

And here are births from 1943 to 1947:

3.1 million 1943

2.9 million 1944

2.9 million 1945

3.4 million 1946

3.8 million 1947.

How many of these survived to age 66?

The CDC publishes annually the life tables, the latest of which came out a few days ago for the year 2009. A person aged 63 in 2009 (born in 1946) was among the 86% who survived to 63, according to the tables. In the 2008 tables from a year ago, that same person at age 62 was among the 87% who survived to 62. In the 2007 tables at 61 he was among the 88% who survived to 61. Extrapolating forward to 2012, we will estimate that at 66 he was among the 83% who survived.

So for persons born earlier than 1946 we can estimate their survival rate as follows:

Born in 1943, retiring at 66 in 2009: 80% survive, or 2.48 million

Born in 1944, retiring at 66 in 2010: 81% survive, or 2.35 million

Born in 1945, retiring at 66 in 2011: 82% survive, or 2.38 million

Born in 1946, retiring at 66 in 2012: 83% survive, or 2.82 million

Born in 1947, retiring at 66 in 2013: 84% survive, or 3.19 million.

Total theoretically possible retirees: 13.22 million, 2.17 million more than actually left the labor force.

Obviously, not everyone retires at 66. Some keep working. And especially these days some keep working because they have to. The employment level of the 55 and over set has grown by 4.5 million over the period 2009-2013.

It appears to be the case, however, that an even larger number are deferring both Social Security benefits and work because they can afford to: Social Security reports that retired workers and their dependents receiving benefits grew only 5.6 million from the end of 2008 to the end of 2013.

Of the 11.05 million added to "not in labor force", I'd estimate at least 5.4 million are well off enough to forgo both work and Social Security until they reach age 70, and perhaps more than that if Social Security recipients who continue to work according to the rules are counted instead as part of the labor force.

Bush And Obama Piss Down The Backs Of Older Workers And Tell Them It's Raining

In the post-war period, the unemployment level for workers 55 and over first reached the 400,000 mark in 1948, and rattled up and down around that for five decades, briefly doubling during the recessions after 1980 and 1990. The weakness was already apparent however by July 1974, when the level last got effectively to 400,000, at 402,000. The superlative growth of GDP under Truman, Eisenhower and JFK/Johnson had propelled the country strongly forward but ran out of gas, quite literally, the summer after I graduated from high school. It was the immediate aftermath of the Arab oil embargo, and also the summer when Richard Nixon's presidency went tits up. The Vietnam denouement occurred the following year, Jimmy Carter got elected a year after that, and within four years interest rates and inflation rose to crippling levels. America had lost her way. The reforms during the Reagan/Bush years would take until the presidency of Bill Clinton in the 1990s to make GDP look once again like it did during the immediate post-war years. Things got so good by the late 1990s that people routinely quit their jobs, looking for greener pastures elsewhere. Finding and keeping qualified workers became very difficult for employers. But it was not to last.

It was in May 2001 that the unemployment level for America's oldest workers last saw that old normal territory, at 493,000, and it hasn't looked back since.

Since that date there has been a sustained problem of unemployment for older workers, for whom the new normal level quickly became 800,000 during the Bush administration. Now it has ramped up much higher than that under Obama, the new normal since 2008 rising five times the old normal to 2 million. The unemployment level for workers 55 and over has gone from 493,000 in 2001 to a peak of 2.233 million in 2010, an increase of nearly five fold. Today the level remains stuck just under 2 million.

Under George Bush the unemployment level for older workers never really came down, and under Obama it has hardly moved after ramping up so high. It is hard to believe that it isn't by design, since older workers tend to be the highest earners. You can save a lot of money as an employer by firing them. 2 million workers no longer making $50,000 a year comes to a savings of $100 billion annually.

Older workers no longer working aren't depreciating assets. They're expenses, written-off.

Who will be next?

Romney's Path From 206 Ended At 266

Romney was competitive only in Florida with 49.3% (29), Virginia with 47.8% (13) and Ohio with 48.2% (18), with no evidence beyond that suggesting a path to victory, just hope (!) for the best.

Where've we heard that before? From a real liberal, Barack Obama. The opposition could smell our weakness in our imitation of them. And the voters wisely recognized that faux liberalism is no substitute for the real thing. Republicans didn't offer the country a clear alternative to Obama, just a facsimile.

This suggests money spent in places like Michigan was a big mistake, where Obama finished with 53.5% to 45.6%. And believe me, I received numerous robocalls and a fair number of live calls from Republicans trying to win the presidential here. Romney should have arguably allocated more time and money in places like Pennsylvania and Colorado.

Rep. Newt Gingrich Gets Blame For Housing Legislation Which Led To Bubble

Rep. Newt Gingrich was instrumental in turning the American dream into the American nightmare.

Under Gingrich's leadership in the US House as Speaker he spearheaded the drive to turn our homes into a mere commodity which could be flipped over and over again free of capital gains tax. And as everyone now knows only too well, commodities go up, and commodities go down.

From his Wikipedia entry:

In 1997 President Clinton signed into effect the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, which included the largest capital gains tax cut in U.S. history. Under the act, the profits on the sale of a personal residence ($500,000 for married couples, $250,000 for singles) were exempted if lived in for at least 2 years over the last 5. (This had previously been limited to a $125,000 once-in-a-lifetime exemption for those over 55.) There were also reductions in a number of other taxes on investment gains. Additionally, the act raised the value of inherited estates and gifts that could be sheltered from taxation. Gingrich has been credited with creating the agenda for the reduction in capital gains tax, especially in the "Contract with America", which set out to balance the budget and implement decreases in estate and capital gains tax. Some Republicans felt that the compromise reached with Clinton on the budget and tax act was inadequate, however Gingrich has stated that the tax cuts were a significant accomplishment for the Republican Congress in the face of opposition from the Clinton administration.


Look what happened to housing in 1997 after the legislation became law according to the Shiller index:

After four decades of relative price stability in real terms, the dramatic tax change Gingrich championed helped develop one of the most notable bubbles in American history, as well as a banking crisis and unemployment the likes of which we haven't seen since the 1930s.

Set 'Em Up, Joe

A glass of wine a day is better for longevity than none (and better than the whole bottle), according to a new study following out-patients aged 55-65:

1,824 participants were followed for 20 years. ... Just over 69% of the never-drinkers died during the 20 years, 60% of the heavy drinkers died and only 41% of moderate drinkers died.

Read all about it, here.