I wrote about Workampers, old retirees that move around the country in search of work, in my earlier blog post that discussed the excellent book, Nomadland by Jessica Bruder. In that post I mentioned that:
So, it is very likely that it was not a young person that picked, packed or shipped the gift that you bought online this Holiday season. Instead, it is very likely that it was an old retiree…
Increasingly e-commerce channels rely on retirees to pick products in the warehouse, which are then shipped to customers. (Picking is the lowest entry-level job in warehouses).
Much of such retirees were people who lost their savings during the 2008 recession.
Recently, one of the best reporters writing on operational issues in society, Alana Semuels at The Atlantic shed some more light on the issue. She writes about how many new seniors are now stuck with never-ending work mostly retail-related. This retiree population also includes many retirees that did not lose their savings in the recession. For instance, she points out that,
the median savings in a 401(k) plan for people between the ages of 55 and 64 is currently just $15,000,…
This is certainly very troubling news. Social Security, employer-sponsored pensions or retirement-savings plans, and individual savings, are three legs of retirement income — and many retirees are increasingly dependent on social security as the only income. Ms. Semuels writes that it often replaces only 40% of the average wage earners’ income when they retire. There are many structural and social issues at play here that being studied by experts on retirement planning at Penn.
As the age-demographic funnel “widens” and the median age of the population gets higher, I feel that we are heading into more serious problems, in which we would have to rely on future generations to increasingly support older generations. Add this to the many issues that the younger generation is facing.