Even as many Americans have returned to work over the past year, making up for most of the pandemic losses in the labor force, a sizable number of older workers are choosing to remain on the sidelines.

In September, the share of people 55 and older who were working or looking for work was down 1.5 percentage points as compared with February 2020, according to the Labor Department. (For comparison, prime-age workers, or those 25 to 54 years old, are down just 0.3 percentage points from before the pandemic.)

There are a number of complex demographic factors contributing to that drop.

There are also reasons that are more easily explained. In the pandemic, many older workers had time to rethink their priorities. And until recent months, the pandemic had been good to them, financially.

Things were different for older workers after the Great Recession

Today’s situation is very unlike what happened after the Great Recession when the housing market crashed and many older workers couldn’t retire because they couldn’t afford to. For years, older workers stayed on the job, offsetting the decline of younger people in the workforce.

Now things are reversed. Older people, especially those over 65 choosing not to work is a big reason the workforce hasn’t fully recovered from the pandemic.

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