The Great Resignation or the Great Unretirement?
A growing number of older Americans are “unretiring” as a cost-of-living crisis, a bear market on Wall Street, and rising interest rates send more people back to the labor market under the stress of diminished living standards.
During the COVID-19 public health crisis, the U.S. economy witnessed a retirement boom, with approximately 4.2 million people exiting the workforce during the first 18 months of the coronavirus pandemic.
At the time, it might have made sense to begin an early retirement of, say, fishing and sleeping in late.
After the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve injected trillions of dollars into the marketplace, investment portfolios skyrocketed. Price inflation was much lower than it is today, while the pandemic-induced lockdowns allowed many households to amass between $2–4 trillion in pent-up savings….