Retirement is a growing luxury in United States
Older adults add incredible value to America’s workforce. But increasingly seniors are returning to work to merely make ends meet. Low savings, longer lives and a rickety safety net are combining to present new challenges, especially here in Florida. It’s a reminder that society benefits both from ready employment and from protecting Americans’ golden years.
A survey released last month by AARP puts the sobering facts into perspective. One in 5 adults over age 50 say they have no retirement savings, and nearly two-thirds are worried they will not have enough money to support themselves in retirement.
Nearly one-third of older adults who roll over credit card debt report carrying a balance of $10,000 or more, while more seniors are racking up heavier debt from a year ago. While about one-third expect their finances to improve over the coming 12 months, a larger percentage is worried about prices outpacing their incomes and their ability to cover basic expenses.
The gloomy outlook raises red flags both for America’s seniors and states like Florida that have long sold themselves as retirement havens. The figure of 1 in 5 adults over age 50 with no retirement savings came from interviews completed with more than 8,000 people, the AARP said. One-fourth also expect to never retire, a share that has steadily increased in the twiceyearly survey since 2022.
The AARP’s findings echo a recent report by Times staff writer Lauren Peace, who chronicled how rising prices and depleted savings are driving some Tampa Bay area retirees back into the workforce. As Peace reported, Americans are living longer, and many seniors are finding their fixed budgets cannot cover rising household costs, medical bills, food and other essentials.
Seniors bring a wealth of value to the workplace, from life experience and varied skill sets to a reputation for being dependable. The number of seniors in the workforce is growing at a rate greater than all other age groups combined; by 2030, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 12% of people ages 75 and older will be working, more than double the rate in 2000. Beyond earning a paycheck, many seniors also credit working with staying mentally sharp and socially engaged.
But it’s one thing for Americans to work as long as they’re able and interested; it’s another when seniors are reentering the workforce because their finances and the social safety net forces them there. According to the latest annual reports, Medicare – the government-sponsored health insurance that covers 65 million older and disabled Americans – will run short of paying full benefits by 2031, while Social Security will run short of full benefits to 66 million retirees only two years later.
Every American, as the AARP noted in its report, “deserves to retire with dignity and financial security.” Yet more are feeling the heat, suffering anxiety and changing their lives to adapt to an uncertain future.
Government and business need to work across a range of fronts to protect pensions, bolster Medicare and Social Security and promote retirement savings plans to younger workers. Americans are 15 times more likely to save for retirement when they have access to a workplace plan, the AARP reported, yet nearly 57 million people do not have access to a retirement plan at work. That’s another retirement bubble waiting to happen.
Older Americans should be in the workforce by choice. That requires Americans to save more throughout their working lives, and for the government to adequately protect the nation’s safety net for all retirees.
“[A]s a company, we have a responsibility to engage. For this reason, we are working together with other businesses through groups like the Business Roundtable to support efforts to enhance every person’s ability to vote.”
These were the words of AT&T CEO John Stankey, responding to a Georgia law that limited absentee voting. A similar bill proposed in Texas prompted Dell CEO Michael Dell to issue the following statement: “Free, fair, equitable access to voting is the foundation of American democracy. Those rights – especially for women, communities of color – have been hard-earned. Governments should ensure citizens have their voices heard. HB6 does the opposite, and we are opposed to it.”
The pattern is clear: U.S. business leaders are increasingly vocal in support of democratic institutions.
The reasons that business leaders would support democracy are not unclear. Compared to authoritarian regimes, democracies produce greater economic growth, invest more in human capital, and create more stable societies through the rule of law. Consumers are also quick to punish firms that support politicians with extreme or undemocratic views. At the same time, however, democracy means that all segments of society, including business, must engage in compromise and power sharing with those that might have very different interests over taxation, regulation, immigration, and social issues.
But are major U.S. firms living up to their stated commitments to democracy? This question is at the heart of a report from the Center for Political Accountability. While public statements in support of democracy and the rule of law are laudable, such talk means little if firms’ political spending is at odds with these commitments.
This question has taken on new importance as American democracy has come under strain over the past decade and a half. As the report highlights, large amounts of spending from corporate sources have supported gerrymandering efforts and restrictions on voting rights that have enabled state legislatures to enact unpopular policies across many policy realms, including abortion, LGBT rights, health care and gun control. More recently, legislatures have even threatened to subvert presidential elections – which, if acted upon, would profoundly destabilize the rule of law in America.
There are two reasons why this report makes an important contribution. The first is that understanding political spending is no easy task. U.S. campaign finance law makes it easy to obscure the flow of money to candidates, parties and especially to political organizations. So-called 527 organizations like the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), which this report focuses on, pool together unlimited contributions from many sources, making it difficult to hold specific donors accountable for how the money is spent.
The second reason is that political spending can have complex and unintended consequences for democratic institutions.
Uniquely among wealthy countries, the United States puts most of its authority over democratic institutions like elections and legislative districting at the state level, where many big-spending political groups like the RSLC focus their efforts, often with little transparency. The decline of local newspapers and the dominance of national culture wars in media have made it much more difficult to track threats to democracy that arise from the state level – and whose political spending is financing them.
Political spending has long been a challenge for American democracy. But this challenge has become more urgent in recent years as society polarized and political spending grew larger and less transparent. In this light, the Center for Political Accountability’s efforts to shed light on political shareholders’ spending – giving employees, consumers and citizens the tools to make informed economic and political decisions – have taken on new significance.