Older workers aren’t retiring. Should they be forced to?

This is Planet Money from NPR. When I talked to Ryan Hendrickson, he was sitting on a porch in Southern California on his lunch break. The wind chimes are such a nice touch. I feel like I'm relaxing. I hope that doesn't mess up the audio. On the leak, yeah, right? Ryan is 37, the first in his family to go to college, and he's going to work on some cool, cool stuff in his career so far. Working on a few different missions, when we send like a rover or a spacecraft to another place. Sweet, like NASA. Yes, yeah. Yeah. NASA, the dream. He was crushing it. Ten years into his time there, he'd been promoted three times. And an opportunity came up for me to move into like a supervisor type of position. And they ended up going with someone else for the role of. Which, okay, fine, that happens. But Ryan was bummed and he asked the higher ups what he could do differently next time. The response I got was, no, you're doing a great job. Just keep doing what you're doing and it will work out. And I was just sort of like, that's what I've been doing and that didn't work. So Ryan was feeling a little stuck, like he was doing everything right, everything he should do, but he just couldn't move up anymore. And he couldn't stop thinking about who got the job instead of him. The person that ended up getting the role had been at NASA for some or around like 40, 45 years. And they actually had this same position like 20 or 30 years ago. That's the supervisor position that they were applying for. They had already had. Yeah, they had already had it. Frustrations kind of boiled up a little bit. Getting to a point where the role I was going for was filled by someone who was well into retirement age, but also had that exact same role like 20 years prior to that. You know, definitely felt unfair. Yeah, we're talking about age here, just to name the 800 pound rover in the room. So you said that the person who got the job over you had been at NASA 45-ish years. Yeah. So they're like 66, 67? Yeah, I guess this person also did have their PhD as well. Oh, so they're like maybe 75? Yeah. If you're being like your most petty self, like what were you feeling? Yeah, it was definitely really frustrating. But technically I don't have my PhD right. So on that front, definitely they were more qualified for sure. We did reach out to NASA. They said they generally do not comment on personnel matters. But yeah, this person was obviously more qualified. More years on the job, had management experience. A PhD was maybe even better than Ryan at doing the job. Okay, and there are probably also a bunch of other good reasons why this person wanted their old job back again, right? But Ryan says he couldn't help but feel like this worker took an opportunity from him. Like they already had the chance to do this job when they were younger. And Ryan felt like it was his time now, his turn. He was feeling like this implicit agreement between employee and employer that if you work hard, you can move up in pay and position wasn't happening for him anymore. And Ryan went where any late 30s millennial would go to commiserate Reddit. For some reason, I went on to the millennial subreddit and made a post. Basically said it has anyone else been noticing senior colleagues at work refusing to retire and making it much harder to move up the ladder. And there are several similar posts out there, like this one. Rumors won't retire and it's screwing the rest of us. There I said it. Attention grabbing. Yeah. That's BJ Swami and engineer Integh who wrote that colorful Reddit post. What kind of reaction did you get? Oh, Reddit just lost its mind. Like I got, oh my goodness, all varied reactions. The perspective of the younger colleagues was they work hard, they're ambitious, they want to go places but then they're stuck and then there's others that are saying, I would retire now but I can't afford to retire and I'm in my 70s. BJ had written that his boss was 71 and kept saying he'd retire next year. I know he said he had some health reasons and the family had to pay off medical bills. And I felt his pain but it was also frustrating for my end because like I'm stuck in this position because I can't go to the next level because I'm, you know, there's already people there that are not retiring and it's just hard. And for BJ, it feels like the writing is already on the wall for him. You know, we're told to save for retirement constantly. You know, put money in the 401k and max your Roth IRA compound interest. Okay, cool. I would love to but I can't get promoted so I can't make more money and I barely save anything. And it's almost like I know I'm going to probably be the same person in my 70s doing the same thing and then some guy or girl my age is going to be like I should be in that position but I'm stuck here because of you. You're going to be the 70 year old that some younger workers are getting about. Oh yeah, I feel like that's the irony of life. Because you want to work until you're 70 or because you think you're going to have to. Probably have to in all fairness. Alright, despite BJ's provocative headline his post is actually pretty thoughtful and it captures this feeling that many early and mid-career workers are having. When older workers cannot afford to retire, that's one thing. When they can and just don't want to, that's trickier. It's just a cycle and it sucks and I don't know what the solution is honestly. We heard about a potential solution. Hello and welcome to Planet Money, I'm Sarah Gonzalez. There are 11 million people over age 65 in the US workforce and age in the workplace is a complicated thing to talk about. In fact, sometimes it's illegal to bring up but the trend toward later and later retirement is one of the most important labor market developments of the 21st century. So we're going to talk about it. Today on the show, a debate over how long people should work who wins when we delay retirement, who doesn't and we consider an old idea to force people to retire. Plus the case for why older workers want to and maybe even should work even longer. All right, you want to meet the person with the potential solution for our retirement problem. If you think that it is a problem, here he is. I'm Sam, I teach college and I teach law and I'm excited to chat. I teach college is the chillest way I've heard someone say that they're a professor. Well, I always like professors who said they're teachers. Samuel Moyne, Sam, teaches history and law and has just written a book called "Gerryntocracy in America." It's about how, according to him, some older Americans are, quote, "horning, power, and wealth, and housing, and jobs." Now, we're just going to talk about the jobs part because Sam has a pretty provocative take that older workers are staying in their jobs way longer than they should. Oh, absolutely. I think it's very widespread across a lot of domains. People are under the thumb of old people, old men, most commonly. And why is that a problem? Yeah. So, one of the most glaring is injustice or unfairness towards other people, especially younger people. We're going to get to his arguments in a bit, but first, it used to be that people didn't retire at all, right? For most of human history, you worked until you died on the farm or became physically unable to work. There was no such thing as retirement. Then, in the 1880s, the head of Germany, this guy named Otto von Bismarck, looking to score some points, said, "What if we let people stop working when they get older and the government takes care of you?" People were like, "Sounds great." And slowly, the idea picked up in the United States as well. In the 1930s, the US got social security, then in the '60s, Medicare and people started retiring. Also, traditional pensions were more common, where employers would guarantee workers a specific amount of money every month for the rest of their life after retirement. And these old school pensions actually incentivized workers to retire at a specific age. And for all of these reasons, the trend for four decades was earlier and earlier retirement. But then, in the '90s, the trend reversed. The average age of retirement started going back up. People were working longer, And there were a few reasons. reasons for this. For one, people were living longer, so they could work longer. Also jobs got a lot less physically strenuous, so it was easier to work longer. And traditional pensions started going away. So people couldn't afford not to work longer. The share of employed people 65 and older has close to doubled since the mid 1980s. Now about 19% of the workforce is over age 65, and Samoyne says there have been some collateral effects, like upward mobility for younger workers. When older people are hoarding their positions and refusing to retire, they're inhibiting other people from getting what they have acquired. This staying on is unfair to younger people who often have to choose different careers or wait around for a cent in their career. Younger people can't move up in pay, can't move up in position, or can't get the job at all. And then can't afford like to buy a home and the whole houses and other benefits. As the proportion of workers over age 55 has gone up, so has the pay gap between older and younger workers. Between 1979 and 2018, the pay gap between those over age 55 and under age 35 has increased by 61%. Sam points out the US is the first society in history where you're more likely to be poor if you're young than if you're old. And yet Sam says most of the social safety net is for older Americans, right? Not like lower paid, mid-career people struggling to afford childcare and buy a house. Okay, now we have to get to the solution. What is the conclusion? Well, the main one I talk about is mandatory retirement. Mandatory retirement. Meaning you think we should force people to retire when they hit a certain age. Correct. Sam is very careful to say that of course there are a lot of older workers who would love to retire but can't afford to, right? There are millions of Americans over age 65 that live near or below the poverty line, but he is not talking about those workers, you know, people in blue collar, low paying, back breaking jobs. We should actually like be thinking creatively about how we can do better by them and their retirement too, but they're not the ones who are hoarding employment opportunity. Sam is talking about those who can afford to retire but don't. Particularly those in powerful positions like, you know, politics and those in the highest level, highest paying, why call their job? So engineers, lawyers, judges, CEOs, journalists, professors. Sam says academia is actually worst of all as a place where older people quote, "Stay on to the detriment of the rest." Now, is it legal to force millions of workers out of their job because of their age? Nope, sure isn't. Not in most sectors of the US, but it used to be not too long ago even. It used to be standard to have mandatory retirement. In the 1970s, about half of all jobs in the US came with a non-negotiable expiration date. A date when workers would be forced to leave when they hit a certain age, usually age 65. One of the ideas behind mandatory retirement ages was to help freshen up the workforce, bring younger workers in with their newer skills. So people like Albert Einstein, Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist, had to retire. They had to leave their universities because they reached their age of mandatory retirement. This was standard. So people would be like at their job for a decade or two decades or four decades and then they'd be like, "Oh, it's your birthday. You're gone?" Absolutely. Like on their birthday? On their birthday. And really? And you knew when you got in. And you knew from the start you retired at 65. Yeah, people knew when they took the job, what their last day was going to be and everyone could plan around that. Even when Congress passed the age discrimination in Employment Act in 1967, employers were still allowed to force people to retire at age 65. But after lobbying from the ARP and pushed back from seniors who were like, "Hey, we're living longer now. Why are we getting kicked out of work when we still have so much life to live?" The law was revised. They said, "You couldn't kick anyone out until they hit age 70." Then the law was revised again in 1986 when it became largely illegal to force anyone to retire because of age. Though Congress did make a temporary exemption for universities because universities, academics, they were strongly warning against the consequences of eliminating mandatory retirement, saying it would be bad for business, bad for innovation, bad for research. Like this former Chicago School Provost who went on to be Stanford University President. Oh, Gerhard Casper. Yeah, he went hard. What did he say? I've never met him, but he was one of my heroes. He said that innovation and education comes from young faculty members. Faculty tend to teach what they understand and they understand best what they learn when they were young. Everything he warned about has come true. I mean, you think that there's. Okay, you think there's a good less quality research being done by the older. Oh, yeah, you're shaking your head like, of course, there. Absolutely. Yeah, no, it's. Okay, Milton Friedman. Famous economist won the Nobel Prize in Economics the year that he was forced to mandatory the retire from his university. Yeah, but that's for time served. It's not for future promise. Nobel prizes are for something you did and no one's expecting you to do it again. Harsh. Now, Sam has been accused of ageism since his book came out, but Sam says it's not ageism because what he's proposing would apply to everyone who eventually becomes old. So younger workers would also be subject to force retirement at some point, right? There were, of course, unintended consequences from making mandatory retirement ages illegal. Ironically, it created new ways to discriminate against older workers. Because, like, sure, it protects current employees from being forced out, but employers might choose not to hire older workers at all because they worry they'll be difficult to let go later. And kind of surprisingly, mandatory retirement is still allowed in some industries in the United States for commercial pilots, air traffic controllers, federal firefighters, often state judges. In these professions, you do not have the right to stay on until you decide to leave. Air traffic controllers have a mandatory retirement age of 56. So young, commercial pilots have a mandatory retirement age of 65. And that age cap was based on a year's long safety study. When Congress tried to raise the age of retirement for pilots to 67 a few years ago, the pilots union said, we don't want that unless you can prove that raising the age is safe. And Sam's really just saying, maybe there are other professions out there that should also consider age caps. Okay, so I have to ask you how old are you? I'm 54. You're 54. 54 and a half. Okay, all right, 55. 54. 54 and a half. 54, sorry, sorry, at six months. So you're like, you're out at 65, you're retiring? Um, I've said 70. I mean, I like 69 and a half. Indy, look at you. You're well, no, but look, we have people who are in their 80s here. Look, I want a general rule. We all agree about it. And if it's 65, I'm down. I would retire earlier than that. If I might, I mean, I'm not committing to it, but I'm definitely committing to retire before a lot of my older colleagues have chosen to do so. Well, you know, 80 is the new 70 and 70. I wasn't aware. Okay, to know Olivia. We called up economist Olivia S. Mitchell for a counterpoint. Olivia started out as a labor economist now focuses more on things like pensions and retirement at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. And as an economist, Olivia fundamentally rejects the assertion that older workers are taking jobs away from younger workers. This is known as the lump of labor fallacy, which we've covered on planet money before. The lump of labor fallacy is the mistaken belief that there's a fixed amount of work to be done in an economy, like one big lump of jobs that we all fight over and have to share. So the lump of labor fallacy is the notion that there's only a certain number of jobs in the labor market. And if the older people don't retire, there won't be any opportunities for the young or for women or for, you know, ethnic minorities. And the reality is that more people working create more jobs and create more demand for labor. I mean, I think a good example is like when women enter the labor force. It's not like we took all the men's jobs and now there weren't enough jobs for men. Like we will make as many jobs as we need is sort of the idea. Right. And I would say that when women did go into the paid labor market, that created jobs for other people to help them, you know, help to care their houses, help to care their children. Right. The idea that an older person refusing to retire is preventing a younger person from finding a job is just wrong, Olivia says. But that's not necessarily the only thing that Sam is saying. I see that for, like, there's not a finite number of jobs. And the more people working creates new jobs and new opportunities, that all makes sense. But I think some people's arguments, like this book author, Samuel Moin, he's not really saying there aren't enough jobs for younger workers. He's saying there's not enough well-paying jobs. And that it's because the older workers have the highest salaries. How old is he? Not above 60. Yeah. Why do you say that? I was just curious. Yeah. So anyways, yeah. People always bring up the lump of labor fallacy to Sam. And generally he agrees that more people working creates more jobs. It's good for the economy. In general, it's great to have more jobs. And the fact that someone holds a job doesn't forbid the creation of a new job. But sometimes it does. So there is not a finite number of jobs in the economy, but maybe there are in some sectors, like tenured professors, for example. After the break, we put some real parameters on how mandatory retirement could work and for who? Also, a hot take from Olivia. Well I think people retire far too early. Um, do you mind sharing with us how old you are? I'm 73. That's Economist, Olivia S. Mitchell again. And how do you feel about work? Are you? I wake up every day, say, Oh, there's new things I could explore. I'm so excited. Really? Yeah, I'm not planning to retire. I mean, at some point, well, maybe another 10 years, we'll give it everything's on a 10 year plan. We'll see. Olivia will maybe consider retiring around age 83, but like hard, maybe I have a lot of research left in me. I have a lot of books I want to write. I told Sam Woyne about Olivia, which is like, I do not plan on retiring. I think that's, uh, let's check the citation counts of those over 70 and see what, what happens? What, what work actually changes fields? We're to think of a lot produced by those over 70 with all due respect. The hits keep coming from Sam. And listen, this is where Sam's argument does start to get more uncomfortable. Okay. Because he is saying that when it comes to research, younger academics tend to be more innovative. And he doesn't meant that in some professions, the older you get, sure, the better you get at your job, because it's more about repetition. So like think a pianist or maybe, I don't know, an interpreter, but like in science, for example, according to a peer reviewed study in the Journal of Science, researchers from the University of Chicago did find that quote, scientific innovation narrows as scientist age. They wrote younger scientists are quote, more likely to instigate disruption in their fields, replacing established ideas with new ones. Well, older scientists tend to iterate on their earlier work. Now of course, this is not true for all jobs, but so. And there is this economic theory that kind of backs some of this stuff up to and the case for mandatory retirement. Okay. So there is this economist, his name was Edward Lizier and he used to say that mandatory retirement enabled this like implicit contract between the worker and the employer. And it basically says, when you are a younger worker, you get paid less than your productivity, but we reward you by when you're an older worker, you get paid more than your productivity. And he's like, but that only works. And we all were okay with that because there was an end date to when you're an older worker, because otherwise if you stay past, you know, 70, 75, 80, you're just getting this high salary. And it's more than what we should have compensated you from this chunk when you were underpaid, right? Brilliant. Brilliant. Totally agree with his point. With the rise of gerontocracy, what we have is like a rupture of the implicit contract by those who are hanging on. Now, it's not that older workers necessarily become less productive. It's that their salaries are just higher than their productivity. And this economist Edward Lizier said mandatory retirement corrected for that. So I know Eddie Lizier, quite well, the implicit contract. It worked for a time, but that model broke down. Olivia says the assumption that older workers are generally overpaid relative to productivity is much less convincing today than when Lizier wrote his paper and that it is probably a less complete description of compensation practices in today's labor market, because people bounce around now. They don't stay at one job forever to reach that stage when they become overpaid and early career workers are less likely to tolerate being underpaid because of that. Also it's just a different time now. Olivia says there were a bunch of things that actually enabled mandatory retirement ages to work for the employer and for the employee, like traditional pensions, which are so rare now. If we look at the system now, Olivia says there is every reason to work longer as long as possible, actually. She says delaying retirement is not just good for you as a person. For the economy, delayed retirement boosts labor force participation. It raises tax revenues. It eases labor shortages and it generates more economic growth. Olivia travels all over the world advising governments about their pension and social security systems. And she says people are retiring far too early to cover their own needs. Under the US social security rules, you can stop working as early as age 62. But I wouldn't advise that because if you delay claiming until you're 70, your benefits go up by 75 percent. Yeah, the system rewards you if you retire later. So my advice is work more, save more and expect less. That's my mantra. Expect less like from the government to support you. Yes, because social security is running into insolvency within about six years. By the way, Medicare is also running short of money. So when you think about the amount of money you need to retire on these days, it's getting more expensive to retire at all. And this gets to the heart of Olivia's point. As a society, Olivia says, we can't actually afford to let people retire earlier. So if Sam's whole point is, you know, justice for younger workers, Olivia says early retirement would not give them that. So if more people retired younger, then those who are young would end up paying much higher taxes to take care of us, right? When we could be very productive and we could be generating output for the economy. So I am not in favor of people retiring young. Companies would face terrible hiring challenges. Productivity would decline. Government tax revenues would decline. So it's not a good idea. Remember when Congress wanted to raise the mandatory retirement age for commercial pilots and the pilots union said, no, we don't think it's safe. The reason Congress wanted to raise the age was because we had a shortage of commercial pilots. We still do actually. We don't have enough workers in a lot of sectors, plumbers, electricians, registered nurses, home health, aids. So everyone retiring when they turned 70 or whatever, not a great idea. But in fairness to Sam, his proposal is more nuanced than that. I think it could be domain specific. He's talking different age caps for different jobs and not for every single job even necessarily. It really does depend on is there a supply crisis? And is there a reason to force people out if they don't want to leave? He just thinks companies should have the option to force people to retire and that there should be government regulations that let each industry decide and let them change their mind depending on what their labor shortages might be. Give me an example of a profession or an industry where you think they maybe could be or should be exempt from mandatory retirement ages. Oh, primary school teacher is my best example because there's a crisis and supply. Nobody wants to do the job. It's very poorly paid. I think if we actually gave it the status it deserves and the pay it deserves, it would be then just like other white collar professions where you have pipeline issues. But right now, like the public school children of America benefit by having teachers stay rather than be forced out. Even if they're 80, 85, 75. No one else wants to. Yeah. Because one of the things you're saying is like they might not be as good as their job as they once were. Well, any teacher is better than none. Okay, while it seems like Sam and Olivia are pretty far apart, here is where they start to align a little more because right, Sam is not actually saying that all people over age, whatever need to leave the labor force in time. He's just saying that those in high-paying, cushy jobs as he says it should step aside so younger workers can move up. He does think that doing meaningful work is good for you. He's just saying, find other meaningful work that can still keep you moving, keep your brain active, keep you interacting with people. There is research that suggests that people who work longer and maintain their social networks live healthier longer. Sam's not trying to take that away from anyone. He's like, work at a bakery, open a bakery, work at a museum, or maybe just start stepping aside in your current field. You can have face retirement where you teach a bit. You know, you could remain in your firm as like an avuncular counselor. Come on, as a paid consultant with all of your knowledge and experience, still do research, just not as a full-time tenured professor. For academics, I can write articles and books until my dying day. But you lose your salary? You have a 401k. That means that you have an income, but it's not a salary anymore. But you have a library card at rich institutions like Yale, you have an office. At some universities, you get free housing forever. So you lose very little. Actually, Olivia thinks this is a good idea. You know, I think that's perfectly fine. In fact, in Japan, they still have mandatory retirement. But what happens when the older worker hits that age, they're not forced to go home. What they do is they start training the younger generation to be able to fill their shoes. And I think that would be a good model in the US. Guys, we have agreement. Continue working if you want, but do something else that is meaningful that still allows for youthful succession. We did it. By the way, Sam says two people have reached out to him since his book came out to say that they were going to retire now, because they thought it was the right thing to do for younger workers. As for Olivia, she's staying put. Her work brings her fulfillment. If what you want to do is to work until at least 85, then that's what I want for you also. Thank you and say to you, I'll see you working when you're 100. I don't think I want that. I wish for the opposite for me. And remember Ryan and Vijay, who felt stuck and couldn't move up in their jobs, they both ended up leaving their companies. They said there was just no way for them to advance anymore. Before you leave, we have a quick paper to ask you, please hit the follow button on your podcast app. We know that we have a lot of regular listeners who don't technically follow us. And these apps, they're changing all the time and more than ever, hitting that follow button helps you not miss future shows. But also, it helps other people find money. So it's one way to support our show. And things, as always, to our NPR+ supporters who get sponsor-free listening and bonus episodes, like just recently, a live Zoom call-in where Adrienne Ma and Whelan Wong from the Indicator answered your housing questions with a housing economist for that go to plus.NPR.org for all the details. Today's show was produced by Willa Rubin with booking help from Sam Yellowhorse Kessler. It was edited by Eric Maceete's Menel, fact checked by Charlotte Isador, an engineer by Robert Rodriguez and Jimmy Keeley. Special thanks also to Noah Shiedler, a business insider. I'm Sarah Gonzalez, the ZNPR. Thanks for listening.