Inflation brings retirees back to workforce that badly needs more workers

Summer traditionally is a time for teenagers to swarm the Palm Beach County labor force. But this year, it's retirees that appear to be making a return to the workforce in force.

Record-high gasoline prices, along with the worst spike in inflation in four decades, are prompting seniors living on fixed incomes to seek out work to make sure they can make ends meet financially.

CareerSource of Palm Beach County officials say they are seeing local impact from a national trend — an increase last month in the number of working people age 55 and over. That suggests that even recent retirees are “unretiring” — reversing a pandemic trend in which older, Baby Boomer laborers left the workforce rather than adjust to the new normal in workplaces.

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"Retirees and those people with low incomes, they are the most vulnerable to what's going on," said Tom Veenstra, vice president of administration at CareerSource Palm Beach County. "You've seen what's been happening with prices for living day to day. We've started seeing retirees and seniors come in in larger numbers — not huge numbers, but certainly we're seeing them."

Job seekers, including seniors, should be able to find work

The good news is they are likely to find work.

In April, for example, Palm Beach County's 40,134 posted job openings far exceeded the 17,262 unemployed people seeking work. The county's unemployment rate dropped to a record low 2.3% that month.

Those jobs are available in a broad assortment of industries, from hospitality to finance to transportation to health care. The result is there are more employment opportunities than ever, and potentially at a more lucrative hourly pay rate. CareerSource officials have said in past months that the insatiable demand for workers has pushed the county's de facto minimum wage to as much as $16 an hour.

Mickey Salazar, who lives near Palm Beach Gardens, said he hopes he can benefit from the hiring boom.

Salazar, a 92-year-old Korean War veteran, said he is looking for a job in security, specifically manning the entrances at gated residential communities. A former yacht captain, Salazar said he's not looking for keep-me-busy work but rather to make sure he can make ends meet in his household budget.

"I have a reverse mortgage and I have homeowners' insurance problems," he said. "I need to work."

And like the rest of the county's residents, he's paying more for gasoline and for food. But, he said, it's the increase in insurance plus his mortgage that he is most concerned about.

Salazar, who served as an Air Force staff sergeant in the early 1950s, said he only gets $1,131 in monthly income.

"I'm afraid I'll lose my house," Salazar said of his home of 55 years.

Economy may not be sustainable, but for now, it's a job seekers' market

It's an increasingly familiar refrain, CareerSource's Veenstra said. Retirees are telling the agency's workers that they are struggling financially. Some have said they have been forced to sell a car; others lament they can't afford rent increases or hikes in property insurance.

"It used to be that when seniors came in, they just wanted a part-time job because they wanted something to do," Veenstra said. "But now it's more out of financial necessity."

The return of older workers to the workforce reverses a pandemic trend — the exit in droves of workers over the age of 55. That's been one reason why employers have had such a difficult time filling vacancies in the past 18 months.

"With 75 million Baby Boomers retiring by 2030, their accelerated departure from the labor force with decades of experience will be hard to replace," a CareerSource analysis determined just three months ago. "Employers competing to fill jobs from a decreasing pool of applicants continues to drive wage growth to attract talent."

Veenstra said the county's labor market has been sizzling for more than a year. In fact, an annual, post-winter season ebb in hiring never took hold in the summer of 2021.

"There was never a slowdown," he said. "It kept rising and rising."

What happens this summer, Veenstra said, is hard to gauge. He wonders how rising oil and food prices coupled with high labor market demand will impact the economy. The global, and local, ramifications of the war in Ukraine also remain a "wild card."

Altogether, he said, he worries it is not a sustainable trend.

"I don't know that the situation is sustainable," he said. "We have had high labor market demand, and now we have inflation. The way things are going economically, at some point it can't just continue like this. I don't know what some point is. We'll find out."

For now, though, Veenstra said it remains favorable for anyone looking for work.

"Nationally and statewide and locally it's just a really, really strong job market with workers and job seekers still in the driver's seat," he said.

afins@pbpost.com

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Retired workers return to work as inflation rises, unemployment drops