Forced retirement

During the 1990s, seniors who retired on full company pensions, supplemented with Social Security benefits, returned to the job market in great numbers. But this was more a matter of finding new outlets for their energies — not an issue of necessity.

Not so these days as more companies continue to downsize, outsource or shut down redundant post-merger services, resulting in more people being forced to take early retirement packages offering greatly reduced pension benefits. People who had looked forward to retiring at age 65 or later on a comfortable income suddenly find themselves living on reduced incomes that won’t even be supplemented by Social Security for another 10 years or so.

For many of these people, the only option they have to make ends meet is to go back into the job market and find new employment.

As one unwilling “early retiree” told me, “I’m 60 years old. I expected to work at least five or maybe even 10 more years. I was good at what I did, and considered valuable to the company until they decided that they could save money by letting me go early. … Now I either have to find a job that matches my skills or retrain. Either way I’ll never make what I made, or even come close to it.”

A woman who had held a top-paying position in an accounting firm and had to take early retirement told me, “I manage to get some work during tax time. I also signed on with a temp agency. … My income is less than half of what it was.”

Another early retiree whose wife had Parkinson’s disease said he took a low-paying job he hates because it offered health insurance.

Economists predict that as early retirement packages force more middle-aged workers into lower-level work, we will lose the products of their considerable skills, as well as the benefits from their hard-won expertise.

Let’s discuss this further.