Labor Economist Takes Aim at ‘Working-Longer’ Culture

In her forthcoming book, “Work, Retire, Repeat: The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy,” labor economist Teresa Ghilarducci sets out to debunk the idea of an idyllic American labor market where people in their older years are happily working as baristas and retail store greeters to make ends meet.

“The idea that if people don’t have enough in retirement, they should just work longer only works for people with advanced skills or advanced college degrees,” Ghilarducci says. “It has to do with privilege in the labor market … and a little bit of luck. You have to remember the demand side of the equation.”

Teresa Ghilarducci

Ghilarducci, director of the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis and the New School’s Retirement Equity Lab in New York, is a longtime agitator for a more centralized, government-driven retirement system. In a 2018 book, she worked with investment banker and former Blackstone Inc. executive Tony James to advocate for a guaranteed retirement account for all workers without a pension plan; more recently, she has backed a bill proposed in Congress, the Retirement Savings for America Act, that would create a federally sponsored retirement plan.

“Work, Retire, Repeat,” which comes out March 8, hits on some of those themes and policy agendas. But its core focus is on that “liminal, shadowy period” of working years from about 52 to 65. It’s this age, Ghilarducci argues, when American independence in retirement saving and planning meets with the system’s lack of a safety net, knowledge and adequate savings beyond Social Security for millions of people.

“The data spoke to me,” Ghilarducci says about the focus area for her book. “What I was seeing was that, if you don’t have a college degree or advanced skills, you may be permanently out of work at, say, 52 or 53—which hits people through no fault or choice of their own,” she says. “This is particularly bad for women. The age discrimination against women at all education levels is particularly a barrier.”

No Free Lunch

Ghilarducci argues in the book that, even if people want to work longer, employers often don’t want them, particularly if they do not have marketable skills—often the population most in need of additional income in older age.

“Most people are done with work, or their employers are done with them, around 67,” she says. “You see these stories about 90-year-old baristas exactly because they are rare. It’s like seeing a spotted snail or a dog dancing: It just doesn’t happen much.”

Ghilarducci believes American culture, including policymakers, has been lulled into the idea that the policy solution to retirement insecurity is simply to keep working. Known for calling the 401(k) retirement system an “experiment,” Ghilarducci echoes that sentiment in her book, calling the current defined contribution system a “do it yourself experiment” that prioritizes individual choice over a robust pension system.

“Working longer became a policy free-lunch solution that solved all sorts of problems,” she says. “It’s not practical, and it ignored the fact that there isn’t the demand for older workers.”

The first two sections of Ghilarducci’s book are focused on busting the myth that “working longer” is the solution to retirement insecurity, followed by detailed sections breaking down the cost—both economic and human—should the U.S. continue to rely on work as an answer to retirement income needs.

Many of the findings point to the disadvantage such a system will deliver to minorities and women, with data and examples building Ghilarducci’s case. She also delves into the current state of unions in the U.S., along with lower-income service jobs that often lack benefits, the Social Security system and Medicare.

Gray New Deal

In the final section, Ghilarducci turns to her solution for this near-retiree cohort, calling for a “Gray New Deal.” Many of the solutions are geared toward improving working options for older, “graying” workers, often backed by government programs. Ideas she lays out include:

• Establish an Older Worker’s Bureau in the U.S. Department of Labor to focus on this age cohort and offer solutions and resources;
• Expand health insurance to help older workers who are pushed out of the labor market, including lowering the qualifying age for Medicare and making it first-payer insurance;
• Push employers to create better jobs through federal and state policies that “eliminate barriers to labor unions”;
• Revamp training and job programs to make them “more worker-friendly”; and
• Ensure better pensions, including ideas such as the guaranteed retirement accounts Ghilarducci advocated in her 2018 book and a federally backed, national individual retirement account based on the Federal Employees’ Thrift Savings Plan—a case she made in a 2021 white paper that backs the RSAA proposal.

Ghilarducci  notes that later this year she will be “on the hill” in Washington, D.C., to continue work on the RSAA proposal, which she says needs to be passed “for people in their 40s and 50s” who face uncertain retirements.

She will no doubt come up against detractors, many of whom have argued she is picking at a retirement system that is working for millions of people and is set to benefit from two major retirement reform initiatives passed in just the past five years. The professor and researcher has, in the past, been part of debates on these issues with the National Association of Plan Advisors, an advocacy group for the retirement plan industry that has been heavily involved in retirement reform.

Potentially more interesting will be how the RSAA, should it go forward, compares with another bill recently introduced, one widely backed by industry groups, including NAPA. That proposed bill, the Automatic IRA Act of 2024, would create a federal individual retirement account program requiring employers with more than 10 employees to enroll their workers into an IRA.

Ghilarducci, meanwhile, will forward her Gray New Deal.

“I believe that there are jobs that do have a shelf life; skills do become obsolete—and so do bodies,” she says. “Our system is built for our fantasy work life that people can maintain their employment up until 65. That is not the on-the-ground reality of the American labor market.”