Boomer Retirements Continues, the Skills Gap and Hiring Boom [Infographic]

Boomers are the generation born between 1946 and 1964. The generation’s oldest members attained retirement age (65 years old) in 2011, while the youngest members will retire in 2029. By that, roughly one-fifth of the US population will be 65 or older, and around 10,000 baby boomers are predicted to reach retirement age every day between 2011?and 2029.?

Every year, millions of baby boomers leave the workforce in the United States. According to a Pew Research Centre review of monthly labor force data, the number of retiring Boomers climbed more in the past year than in previous years. Around 28.6 million Baby Boomers were out of the workforce in the third quarter of 2020 due to retirement.?

This represents about 3.2 million increase above the 25.4 million Boomers who retired in the same quarter of 2019. Until this year, the overall number of retiring Boomers had been increasing by roughly two million each year on average since 2011 (the year the oldest Boomers retired), with the biggest jump of 2.5 million between the third and fourth quarters of 2014, this may be due to the COVID-19 recession’s job losses which may be contributing to the increase in Boomer retirements. The number of retiring Baby Boomers has climbed by around 1.1 million since February 2020. Some of the rises could be due to seasonal shifts in employment activity.

However, the number of retiring Boomers increased by only approximately 250,000 from February to September last year. In September, 40% of Baby Boomers had retired, up from 39% in February. Some demographic groups have seen a bigger growth in the number of retirees in years. Read the whole article.