How Will Boomer Retirement Affect Jobs for Young Adults?

The “baby boom” generation, made up of Americans born from after World War II up into the early 1960s, is sometimes called the “pig in the python” of US demographics. The pig started moving into retirement age around 2010, when the earliest of the boomers hit age 65. At present, the tail end of the boomers (like me) are hitting retirement age. This shift has some well-known implications, like the rising financial pressures on Social Security and Medicare. But here, I want to focus on a different implication: With large numbers of retirees, and lower birthrates after the baby boom generation, it seems as if the supply of labor in the US economy should be growing at a relatively slow pace for the next decade or two. In addition, basic economics suggest that a slowdown in supply should tend to raise the price–in this case, raise the wage for young workers entering the job market. How likely is this scenario? Steven Ruggles offers some calculations and insights in “The pig in the python:…