Employment Trends for the 50+ Workforce

Our earlier update on Long-Term Employment Trends by Age and Gender included a chart illustrating the growth (or shrinkage) in six age cohorts since the turn of the century. In this commentary, we'll zoom in on the age 50 and older labor force participation rate (LFPR).

But first, let's review the big picture. The overall LFPR is a simple computation: You take the civilian labor force (people age 16 and over employed or seeking employment) and divide it by the civilian non-institutional population (those 16 and over not in the military and or committed to an institution). The result is the participation rate expressed as a percent.

For the larger context, here is a snapshot of the monthly LFPR for age 16 and over, stretching back to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' starting point in 1948 (the purple line in the chart below) along with the unemployment rate.

Labor Force Participation Rate

The overall LFPR peaked in early 2000 at 67.3% and gradually began falling. The rate leveled out from 2004 to 2007, but in 2008, with the onset of the great recession, the rate began to accelerate. The latest rate is 62.7% - barely at pre-pandemic levels. The demography of our aging workforce has been a major contributor to this trend. The oldest baby boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964, began becoming eligible for reduced Social Security benefits in 2008 and full benefits in 2012. Job cuts during the great recession certainly strengthened the trend.