return to work, and companies stand ready to hire them, according to the AARP.AARP CEO Jo Ann Jenkins said the reasons for early retirement varied in 2020: some people retired to avoid COVID-19 exposure, while others were laid off because of massive job cuts.
Others may have retired early because the pandemic was a reminder of our own mortality — leaving the workforce was a way to "seize the day," financial planner Liz Weston said in 2021.More than two years later, many of those early retirees "are bored to death and looking to do something that has meaning and purpose," Jenkins said at a recent event hosted by the social impact nonprofit Concordia.The pace of retirements among baby boomers, those born from 1946 to 1964, accelerated during the pandemic, a Pew Research Center analysis of monthly labor force data found.
The number of boomers who reported that they were out of the labor force due to retirement grew 3.2 million in the third quarter of 2020 compared with the previous year.
Before the pandemic, the number of retired boomers had been growing an average of 2 million each year since 2011, when the first boomer turned 65.RELATED: Here’s how much money you should be saving per paycheck"At the beginning of COVID, so many of us were at home thinking, ‘Is this what I’m going to do the rest of my life?’" Jenkins said.Another factor that could be bringing more retirees back into the workforce is the near record-high inflation Americans have endured over the past year.