Wednesday, January 24, 2024

The Daily Money: Retirement comes sooner than you think

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The Daily Money

ALL THE MONEY NEWS YOU NEED TO KNOW

Wed Jan 24 2024

Daniel de Visé | Personal Finance Reporter

Good morning! It's Daniel de Visé with your Daily Money.

We're living healthier, longer. Many of us have jobs we can do on a computer from our couch. If we want to keep working past 70, or even past 80, what's to stop us?

A lot, as it turns out.

The average American retires not at 80, or 70, or even 65, but at 62. That statistic comes from two different annual surveys of working and retired Americans.

Sixty-two is a point in life that many of us would term middle age: hardly a moment to hang it all up. Medicare doesn't kick in until 65. Average life expectancy is 77.5. Our sitting president is 81.

Few of us plan to retire at 62. But here's the hard truth: We don't always get to retire when we want.

Unionized staff at Condé Nast walk the picket line during a 24-hour walk out amid layoff announcements in front of the Condé Nast offices at One World Trade Center New York City on Jan. 23, 2024. The strike comes after Condé Nast said it would lay off approximately 5% of its staff, some 300 employees.

Angela Weiss, AFP via Getty Images

Union membership hits bottom

Despite an uptick in worker stoppages, boycotts and strikes last year, union membership remained at a historic low in 2023, Sara Chernikoff reports.

Striking workers seemed to be everywhere in 2023. More than 500,000 workers walked off the job for better benefits, pay and/ or working conditions last year, according to Cornell University's Labor Action Tracker. More than 400 strikes were recorded by the tracker. But the rate of union members is the lowest in decades, at 10%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

In the 1950s, 1 in 3 workers were represented by a union. Now it's closer to 1 in 10. Labor experts blame labor laws that favor management and an untick in corporate-backed union suppression tactics.

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About The Daily Money

Each weekday, The Daily Money delivers the best consumer news from USA TODAY. We break down financial news and provide the TLDR version: how decisions by the Federal Reserve, government and companies impact you.

Daniel de Visé covers personal finance for USA Today.