A study released this month has revealed more than three million Americans retired earlier than previously planned due to COVID-19. The St. Louis Fed study was published Oct. 15 in an article by economist Miguel Faria e Castro called “The COVID Retirement Boom.” The study analyzed labor force participation rates before and after the start of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States. The research noted “a significant number of people who had not planned to retire in 2020 may have retired anyway because of the dangers to their health or due to rising asset values that made retirement feasible” through August 2021. Two reasons were observed in the research for the surge in retirements during the pandemic. First, the extra retirees tended to be older individuals more vulnerable to COVID-19 and were motivated to leave the workforce to decrease the risk of infection. Second, the study suggested the number …