Sunday, October 16, 2022

Social Security & Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits for 70 million Americans will increase 8.7 percent in 2023

 

https://www.ssa.gov/cola/

Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) Information for 2023

Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits for approximately 70 million Americans will increase 8.7 percent in 2023.

The 8.7 percent cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) will begin with benefits payable to more than 65 million Social Security beneficiaries in January 2023. Increased payments to more than 7 million SSI beneficiaries will begin on December 30, 2022. (Note: some people receive both Social Security and SSI benefits)

Read more about the Social Security Cost-of-Living adjustment for 2023.

The maximum amount of earnings subject to the Social Security tax (taxable maximum) will increase to $160,200.

The earnings limit for workers who are younger than "full" retirement age (see Full Retirement Age Chart) will increase to $21,240. (We deduct $1 from benefits for each $2 earned over $21,240.)

The earnings limit for people reaching their “full” retirement age in 2023 will increase to $56,520. (We deduct $1 from benefits for each $3 earned over $56,520 until the month the worker turns “full” retirement age.)

There is no limit on earnings for workers who are "full" retirement age or older for the entire year.

Read more about the COLA, tax, benefit and earning amounts for 2023.


Medicare Information

Information about Medicare changes for 2023 is available at www.medicare.gov. For Social Security beneficiaries receiving Medicare, their new higher 2023 benefit amount will be available in December through the mailed COLA notice and my Social Security's Message Center.


Your COLA Notice

In December 2022, Social Security COLA notices will be available online to most beneficiaries in the Message Center of their my Social Security account.

This is a secure, convenient way to receive COLA notices online and save the message for later. You can also opt out of receiving notices by mail that are available online. Be sure to choose your preferred way to receive courtesy notifications so you won’t miss your secure, convenient online COLA notice.

Remember, our services are free of charge. No government agency or reputable company will solicit your personal information or request advanced fees for services in the form of wire transfers or gift cards. Avoid falling victim to fraudulent calls and internet “phishing” schemes by not revealing personal information, selecting malicious links, or opening malicious attachments. You can learn more about the ways we protect your personal information and my Social Security account here.


History of Automatic Cost-Of-Living Adjustments (COLA)

The purpose of the COLA is to ensure that the purchasing power of Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits is not eroded by inflation. It is based on the percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) from the third quarter of the last year a COLA was determined to the third quarter of the current year. If there is no increase, there can be no COLA.

The CPI-W is determined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Department of Labor. By law, it is the official measure used by the Social Security Administration to calculate COLAs.

Congress enacted the COLA provision as part of the 1972 Social Security Amendments, and automatic annual COLAs began in 1975. Before that, benefits were increased only when Congress enacted special legislation.

Beginning in 1975, Social Security started automatic annual cost-of-living allowances. The change was enacted by legislation that ties COLAs to the annual increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI-W).

The change means that inflation no longer drains value from Social Security benefits.

Tuesday, August 16, 2022

MEDICARE RX SAVINGS- MORE DETAILS - INFLATION REDUCTION ACT SIGNED INTO LAW TODAY!

 

For Older Americans, Health Bill Will Bring Savings and ‘Peace of Mind’

Starting in 2025, Medicare recipients with prescription drug coverage will not have to pay more than $2,000 annually for medications, a significant savings for some.

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By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Noah Weiland

Aug. 10, 2022

WASHINGTON — After Pete Spring was diagnosed with dementia in 2016, he and his wife emptied their checking account in part to pay for his prescription drugs, then ran through $60,000 in pension payments before resorting to a charge card to help make sure Mr. Spring had the heart and Alzheimer’s medications he needed to survive — just two of the 11 drugs he took.

Mr. Spring, of Marietta, Ga., died in April, before the unveiling of the tax, climate and health bill that the Senate passed over the weekend. The measure aims to lower the cost of prescription drugs for people on Medicare, like him; his wife, Gretchen Van Zile, has been left to look back on what felt like an outrageous injustice.

“Here seniors are in their golden years,” said Ms. Van Zile, 74, “and the only people seeing gold are the pharmaceutical companies.”

Nearly 49 million people, most of them older Americans, get prescription drug coverage through Medicare, yet many find that it does not go very far. Low-income people qualify for government subsidies, so those in the middle class — people like Mr. Spring and Ms. Van Zile — are hit hardest by high drug costs.

The Senate bill, which the House is expected to pass on Friday, then send to President Biden’s desk, could save many Medicare beneficiaries hundreds, if not thousands of dollars a year. Its best-known provision would empower Medicare to negotiate prices with drug makers with the goal of driving down costs — a move the pharmaceutical industry has fought for years, and one that experts said would help lower costs for beneficiaries.

But the legislation would also take more direct steps to keep money in people’s pocketbooks, though they would be phased in over time.

Beginning next year, insulin co-payments for Medicare recipients would be capped at $35 a month. As of 2024, those with costs high enough to qualify for the program’s “catastrophic coverage” benefit would no longer have to pick up 5 percent of the cost of every prescription. And starting in 2025, out-of-pocket costs for prescription medicines would be capped at $2,000 annually.

“This is a huge policy change and one that has been a long time coming,” said Dr. Stacie Dusetzina, an associate professor of health policy at Vanderbilt University. “For people needing high-cost drugs, this will provide significant financial relief.”

Between 2009 and 2018, the average price more than doubled for brand-name prescription drugs in Medicare Part D, the program that covers products dispensed by pharmacies, the Congressional Budget Office found. Between 2019 and 2020, price increases outpaced inflation for half of all drugs covered by Medicare, according to an analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Perhaps no drug has been talked about as much as insulin, the diabetes medication that is more than 100 years old. Prices for insulin and its analogues have risen so fast that many diabetes patients who rely on the drug put themselves at risk by taking less than is prescribed to cut costs.

2020 commentary in the medical journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings reported that one vial of Humalog, a commonly prescribed insulin analogue, cost $21 in 1999 and $332 in 2019 — an increase of well over 1,000 percent. (Amid congressional scrutiny, the drug’s maker, Eli Lilly, promised in 2019 to market a lower-cost generic.)

More than three million Medicare beneficiaries take one of the 42 different types of insulin that are covered by Medicare, according to an estimate by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which found that the average out-of-pocket cost is $54 a month. But for some people, the costs are much higher.

Evelyn Poay, 82, of Merrick, N.Y., spends more than $1,200 every three months on four different diabetes medicines, including Humalog and another type of injectable insulin, which she has been taking for about 30 years.

She still works as a part-time bookkeeper and counts herself as fortunate. “It’s not a question of do I eat or do I take my medicine,” she said.

But she worries about other people, including her own grandchildren, three of whom also have diabetes. Democrats tried to apply the bill’s proposed $35 co-payment to all insulin prescriptions, including those covered by private insurers. But Republican senators forced the removal of that language — even though seven of them wanted to keep it in the bill.

To hear the voices of older Americans who confront high drug costs month in and month out is to hear fear and worry, anger and stress. Many say they are figuring out how to get by, skipping vacations and other niceties for which they saved.

For Kim Armbruster, 65, who recently retired after a 40-year nursing career, keeping down the costs of her medications for diabetes, psoriatic arthritis and Graves’ disease, an autoimmune disorder affecting the thyroid, has been a scramble since she started on Medicare in March.

Ms. Armbruster, of Cary, Ill., said she had saved extra insulin from prescriptions filled when she had commercial insurance, enough to keep costs down before a monthly cap kicks in. But her other conditions have caused immense financial strain.

By June, she had reached Medicare’s threshold for catastrophic coverage after paying more than $7,000 for Enbrel, a drug she takes for the arthritis; Synthroid, which she takes for Graves’ disease; Eliquis, for atrial fibrillation, insulin and her insulin pump.

“It’s all about thinking ahead, looking for alternatives and strategizing the home budget to be able to take the necessary meds,” she said. Learning to keep up with costs, she added, had been like “baptism by fire, to learn everything I can possibly learn about it to maneuver drug costs and stay healthy without complications.”

The carousel of medications taken by Mr. Spring, the dementia patient who died in April, included eye-popping price tags for drugs including Eliquis, for a heart condition, and Namenda, an Alzheimer’s drug. Mr. Spring also took an antidepressant and medications to dull the side effects from Namenda.

Those drugs ran the couple around $1,000 a month. Had the $2,000 annual out-of-pocket cap been in place when her husband was alive, Ms. Van Zile said, they would have reached it by March every year. Ms. Van Zile retired from her job working for Fulton County in Georgia so that she could take care of her husband, further cramping their savings.

“His sense of humor put a smile on my face every day,” she said. “The bitter aspect of it was the financial stress.”

Democrats have been promising for years to lower the cost of prescription drugs. So have some Republicans, including former President Donald J. Trump. But the Senate bill passed along party lines, without any Republican votes. In the 50-50 Senate, Vice President Kamala Harris broke the tie vote.

Republicans, and the pharmaceutical industry, insist that the measure will stifle innovation and reverse progress on therapies and treatments, including those for cancer care — a high priority for Mr. Biden. The industry’s main trade group, PhRMA, says the bill, which imposes stiff penalties on companies that refuse to negotiate, amounts to government price setting — not negotiation.

At a media briefing last month, Stephen J. Ubl, the chief executive of PhRMA, warned that Democrats were “about to make a historic mistake that will devastate patients desperate for new cures.”

But backers of the measure say new treatments are meaningless if patients can’t afford them. The promise of Medicare, enacted in 1965, has always been that it would take care of older Americans. The prescription drug benefit was not added until 2003.

It includes the provision for catastrophic coverage, in which the government picks up the full cost of medicines — except for 5 percent, paid by the patient — after an individual spends $7,050 a year out of pocket. The Kaiser Family Foundation says that 1.3 million Medicare beneficiaries hit the catastrophic threshold each year; 1.4 million have out-of-pocket costs of $2,000 or more.

“You rarely hear people complain about turning age 65 and going on Medicare; it’s often a relief,” said Larry Levitt, the foundation’s executive vice president for health policy. “But the way Medicare now works, there can be some nasty surprises for people with very high drug expenses, and this bill will provide a lot of relief.”

A study conducted by Dr. Dusetzina highlighted how the middle class gets squeezed. She examined 17,076 new prescriptions issued between 2012 and 2018 for Part D beneficiaries, and found that those receiving subsidies were nearly twice as likely to obtain the prescribed drug within 90 days as those without subsidies.

Among those who did not qualify for subsidies, 30 percent of all prescriptions for cancer drugs went unfilled, as did more than 50 percent of prescriptions to treat immune system disorders or high cholesterol.

Patti Kellerhouse, a 64-year-old in Henderson, Nev., was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in 2017 that had spread to her liver. On long-term disability through her employer, she had paid $10 a month out of pocket for the oral cancer treatment she needed. But when she transitioned to a Medicare Advantage plan, the medication cost more than $3,100 for the first month.

While she has been able to afford the price jump, it has stressed her financial planning. She is saving money for a new car, among other things. She said she has daughters and grandchildren whom she would like to continue supporting.

Bob Miller was prescribed Betaseron, a brand-name drug that cost more than $10,000 a year. He said he stopped taking it in 2016, citing the high expense.Credit...Jenn Ackerman for The

“I worked hard my whole life,” she said. “These are high co-payments. They shouldn’t happen when you’re at retirement age.

Many Americans make tough choices about whether to continue taking drugs they need. Bob Miller, a 71 year-old multiple sclerosis patient in Prior Lake, Minn., is among them.

Every other day for 12 years, Mr. Miller took Betaseron, a brand-name prescription drug that can delay the progression of his disease by staving off flare-ups of numbness, muscle stiffness and other symptoms that can leave patients worse off than they were before. But the drug was expensive; even with his Medicare insurance, it cost more than $10,000 a year.

So he quit taking the drug in 2016 after consulting with his doctors, who told him he could “roll the dice” and survive without it — at least for the time being. Since then, he has lived with the unsettling worry that he is gambling with his own health.

“In the background, you don’t know what’s going on,” Mr. Miller said. “There might still be some damage being done to my nerve fibers.”

When a neurologist recently told him it might help to go back on a disease-modifying drug, Mr. Miller told him he would like to, if not for the prohibitive cost. The new legislation, he said, will deliver something he has been longing for: “Peace of mind.”

Sheryl Gay Stolberg is a Washington Correspondent covering health policy. In more than two decades at The Times, she has also covered the White House, Congress and national politics. Previously, at The Los Angeles Times, she shared in two Pulitzer Prizes won by that newspaper’s Metro staff. @SherylNYT

Noah Weiland is a health reporter in the Washington bureau. He was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of Covid-19 in 2020. 

 


Thursday, August 11, 2022

The Inflation Reduction Act Moves to the House after Passing in the Senate

 

The Inflation Reduction Act Moves to the House after Passing in the Senate

Passed by the Senate on Sunday, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) includes many long-sought changes to make health care and prescription drugs more affordable for current and future Medicare beneficiaries.

This bill would transform Medicare’s drug pricing system by allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices for the first time, restructuring Part D to better align pricing incentives, and penalizing drug manufacturers for raising prices faster than inflation.

It would also establish critical, potentially lifesaving beneficiary protections. It would cap Part D enrollees’ annual drug spending at $2,000 and their monthly insulin costs at $35, extend full Low-Income Subsidy (LIS) assistance to Part D those with incomes up to 150% of poverty, and eliminate cost sharing for Part D-covered vaccines.

It would help millions more who aren’t yet eligible for Medicare obtain coverage by continuing enhanced Affordable Care Act premium subsidies. First passed in the American Rescue Plan Act, this assistance has helped over five million older adults afford a Marketplace plan—likely easing Medicare transitions and costs.

Medicare Rights has advocated for many of these policies since Part D was enacted nearly 20 years ago. We applaud Senate passage and urge the House to swiftly follow suit.

That vote may come as soon as tomorrow. House approval would send the legislation to President Biden, who is expected to sign it into law. While many lawmakers have signaled support for the bill, we can’t take anything for granted!

Weigh in today and make sure your U.S. Representative knows to vote YES on the Inflation Reduction Act. Send a letter and make your voice heard.

As we celebrate the advancement of the IRA, we recognize it is smaller in scope than many advocates originally envisioned. It omits important reforms that were once under consideration for inclusion in a drug pricing or reconciliation package, such as an expansion of Medicare Part B to cover comprehensive vision, dental, and hearing services; investments in Medicaid Home- and Community-Based Services; a closure of the Medicaid coverage gap; and a streamlining of the Part D appeals system. As these and other changes continue to be needed, so does our advocacy.

The IRA would meaningfully strengthen the health and financial security of millions of Americans, delivering tangible affordability improvements while beginning to address the drivers of those costs. We look forward to building upon these successes.

Join Medicare Rights in urging Congress to seize this extraordinary moment and pass the Inflation Reduction Act without delay.

Thursday, July 21, 2022

This just in...A REPLY FROM SENATOR KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND

 

Dear Ms. Alexander,

Thank you for contacting me regarding prescription drug prices. I am deeply concerned about the continued increases to the costs of prescription drugs and believe pharmaceutical companies should be held accountable for putting profits over patients. It is unacceptable that too often patients are being forced to decide whether to buy food, pay their rent or pay for medication. I believe allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices is an important step towards making prescription drugs more affordable to all, especially older adults and people with disabilities. 

I have heard from New Yorkers across the state regarding the challenges of high prescription drug costs, and I am fighting in the Senate for policies to address them. I support two bills that would reduce the cost of prescription drugs and make sure that everyone can access the medications they need. The first is The Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Act, which would allow the federal government to negotiate for lower prices for prescription drugs under Medicare Part D, with no changes to patient protections. Right now Medicare pays – on average – three times more than Medicaid for the same top-selling brand name drugs, simply because they are currently prohibited from negotiating. The other bill, the Affordable and Safe Prescription Drug Importation Act, would help level the market for Americans purchasing prescription drugs by allowing patients, pharmacists and wholesalers to import those lower-cost drugs from other countries. I will continue to work with my colleagues to address the continued rise of prescription drug prices. 

Thank you again for writing to express your concerns, and I hope that you keep in touch with my office in the future. For more information on this and other important issues, please visit my website at http://gillibrand.senate.gov

Sincerely,

Kirsten Gillibrand
United States Senator


Wednesday, July 20, 2022

FINALLY MEDICARE RX PRICING REFORM COULD ACTUALLY HAPPEN SOON!!!

Build Back Better Is a Health Care Bill Now

Only two provisions in a once-sprawling social spending package have survived; they would lower prescription drug prices in Medicare and insurance premiums for millions of Americans.Top of Form

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Democrats have promised prescription drug price reform for years and could bring it to fruition with the latest social spending package.Credit...Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By Margot Sanger-Katz

July 15, 2022

WASHINGTON — President Biden and Democrats in Congress had hoped to pass a broad domestic policy package that would expand the social safety net, raise taxes on corporations and the wealthiest Americans, and tighten regulation of climate-changing pollutants. But the decision by Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia to withdraw his support from other aspects of an already-shrunken package this week leaves nothing but health care on the table.

But even if what was once a sidecar of sorts to the so-called Build Back Better Act is now the only vehicle left on the road, it would still have a substantial impact on the lives of many Americans. And unlike other provisions that faced a mixed political reception, the central health care proposal that remains is enormously popular with the public — including Republicans.

That piece is prescription drug price reform, which Democrats have been promising for years and many Americans tell pollsters they want. The bill would take several whacks at the price of drugs — directly regulating prices for a group of expensive medications purchased by Medicare and punishing drug companies that raise prices too fast on existing medicines for all Americans.

The legislation under discussion would also expand Medicare’s prescription drug benefit, increasing financial help for poorer seniors and eliminating the program’s current unlimited cost sharing, which leaves some beneficiaries facing more than $10,000 a year in medication costs. No one on Medicare would be asked to pay more than $2,000 a year for prescription drugs under the legislation, a significant benefit to patients who take expensive medications for serious diseases like cancer and multiple sclerosis.

The prescription drug provisions are unusual in that they offer Americans tangible benefits — lower drug prices, more financial protections — while actually saving the federal government money. That’s because the bill essentially puts the savings on the back of the pharmaceutical industry, which will have to accept lower prices for some of its big sellers.

Defenders of the industry in Congress, and the drug companies themselves, argue that the change could thwart innovation and cost jobs. Such arguments have staved off drug price reforms in the past. But previous rounds of negotiation suggest that this package is likely to have enough votes to pass the Senate.

Mr. Manchin has also signaled his support for another health provision that has received less attention in recent reports of the emerging deal. He said he was open to an expansion of premium subsidies that lower the price of insurance for Americans who buy their own coverage, rather than get it through the government or a job.

Those subsidies were already expanded as part of Congress’s pandemic relief bill last year, but the expansion will expire in December unless new legislation continues them. 

The subsidies are important to many Democratic lawmakers because they are seen as fulfilling the promise of the Affordable Care Act. The extra money lowers premiums for nearly every American who buys a health plan through the Obamacare marketplaces, making certain plans free for lower-income Americans and offering financial support for higher-income people who previously received no help paying for insurance.

In a statement on Friday supporting the measures in which he called on the Senate to pass the legislation before its August recess, Mr. Biden said Democrats had “come together” and “beaten back the pharmaceutical industry.”

“This will not only lower the cost of prescription drugs and health care for families,” he added, “it will reduce the deficit and help fight inflation.”

But for Democrats who had hoped for social spending on programs other than health care, the price of extending the Obamacare subsidies may disappoint. A slightly outdated estimate suggests they will cost the federal government nearly as much to extend as the drug-pricing provisions would save — $220 billion over a decade, compared with about $288 billion in savings.

Mr. Manchin has said he might be open to considering climate and tax provisions in the fall. If he is also hoping for deficit reduction, there may be less money to spend than some lawmakers expected.

Understand What Happened to Biden’s Domestic Agenda


‘Build Back Better.’ Before being elected president in 2020, Joseph R. Biden Jr. articulated his ambitious vision for his administration under the slogan “Build Back Better,” promising to invest in clean energy and to ensure that procurement spending went toward American-made products.

A two-part agenda. March and April 2021: President Biden unveiled two plans that together formed the core of his domestic agenda: the American Jobs Plan, focused on infrastructure, and the American Families Plan, which included a variety of social policy initiatives.

A $6 trillion budget. June 2021: President Biden proposed a $6 trillion budget for 2022. The proposal detailed the highest sustained levels of federal spending since World War II, with the goal of funding the investments in education, transportation and climate initiatives articulated in the two plans.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Nov. 15, 2021: President Biden signed a $1 trillion infrastructure bill into law, the result of months of negotiations. The president hailed the package, a pared-back version of what had been outlined in the American Jobs Plan, as evidence that U.S. lawmakers could still work across party lines.

The Build Back Better Act. Nov. 19, 2021: The House narrowly passed a $2.2 trillion social spending bill intended to fund a package of initiatives from the American Families Plan and the American Jobs Plan. But on Dec. 19, 2021, Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, said he would not support the bill as written, dooming his party’s drive to pass it.

A new attempt. July 15, 2022: Efforts to revive the bill, in a much smaller form, ahead of the midterm elections were dealt a severe blow when Mr. Manchin told Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, that he was unwilling to support funding for climate or energy programs or raising taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations.

 

Monday, June 13, 2022

 

www.MEDICARE.GOV

Get tested for COVID-19 as soon as possible

For many people, the sooner you act on your COVID-19 symptoms, the better! If you test positive — and are more likely to get very sick from COVID-19 — treatments are available to reduce your chances of severe illness.

Here's what you need to know:

  • Don't delay — get tested as soon as possible after your symptoms start. Treatment must be started within days after you first develop symptoms to be effective.
  • If you test positive, talk to your doctor or healthcare provider right away to find out if treatment is right for you, even if your symptoms are mild. There are multiple options for treating COVID-19 at home or in an outpatient setting.

COVID-19 Treatments 💊

If you're symptomatic, you may also want to consider using the Test to Treat program. With thousands of locations nationwide, it can provide faster, easier access to lifesaving COVID-19 treatments. If you test positive, you can see a healthcare provider, and if eligible, get a prescription for an oral COVID-19 treatment and have that prescription filled — all at one location.

Sincerely,

The Medicare Team

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Monday, May 23, 2022

 NEW YORK TIMES

‘I Had to Go Back’: Over 55, and Not Retired After All

After leaving the labor force in unusual numbers early in the pandemic, Americans approaching retirement age are back on the job at previous levels.

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Kim Williams, 62, lost her job early in the pandemic but has recently gone back to work. “I’m too young to retire, so I had to go back,” she said.Credit...Desiree Rios for The New York Times

By Ben Casselman

May 19, 2022

When Kim Williams and millions of other older Americans lost their jobs early in the coronavirus pandemic, economists wondered how many would ever work again — and how that loss would weigh on the economy for years to come.

Ms. Williams, now 62, wondered, too, especially when she struggled for months to find work. But in January, she started a new job at an AAA office near her home in Waterbury, Conn.

“I’m too young to retire, so I had to go back,” she said.

Whether by choice or financial necessity, millions of older Americans have made the same move in recent months. Nearly 64 percent of adults between the ages of 55 and 64 were working in April, essentially the same rate as in February 2020. That’s a more complete recovery than among most younger age groups.

The rapid rebound has surprised many economists, who thought that fear of the virus — which is far deadlier for older people — would contribute to a wave of early retirements, especially because many people’s savings had been fattened by years of market gains. But there is increasing evidence that the early-retirement narrative was overblown.

“The bottom line is that older workers have gone back to work,” said Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

For many people, retiring early was never an option. Ms. Williams spent more than 25 years in manufacturing, working for a Hershey’s plant making Almond Joy and Mounds bars. The job paid reasonably well, and offered a retirement plan and other benefits. But in 2007, Hershey’s closed the factory, moving production partly to Mexico.

The State of Jobs in the United States

The U.S. economy has regained more than 90 percent of the 22 million jobs lost at the height of pandemic in the spring of 2020.

·   Higher Interest Rates: Spurred by red-hot inflation, the Federal Reserve has begun raising interest rates. What does that mean for the job market?

·   April Jobs ReportU.S. employers added 428,000 jobs and the unemployment rate remained steady at 3.6 percent ​​in the fourth month of 2022.

·   Trends: New government data showed record numbers of job openings and “quits” — a measurement of the amount of workers voluntarily leaving jobs — in March.

·   Job Market and Stocks: This year’s decline in stock prices follows a historical pattern: Hot labor markets and stocks often don’t mix well.

·   Unionization Efforts: Since the Great Recession, the college-educated have taken more frontline jobs at companies like Starbucks and Amazon. Now, they’re helping to unionize them.

Ms. Williams, then in her 40s, went back to school, earning an associate degree in hospitality and eventually finding a job as a supervisor at a local hotel. But the position paid significantly less than her factory job, and she drew down her retirement savings to cover medical expenses and other bills. When she was laid off again in June 2020, just a few weeks after her 60th birthday, Ms. Williams had little in savings.

Ms. Williams tried to change careers again, this time going back to school to train as a medical secretary. But she has been unable to find work in her new field. In January, with her savings gone, she took a job at AAA for $16.50 an hour, $2 an hour less than she earned at the factory in 2007, before accounting for inflation. She says she will have to work at least until she can start drawing her full Social Security benefits at age 67.

“If I could’ve left at 62, I would’ve left at 62, but I can’t,” she said. “Not all of us made that money where I could move down to Florida and get a $400,000 house.”

The fastest inflation in decades has added to the pressure on people of all ages to return to work. More recently, so has the turmoil in financial markets, which has taken a bite out of retirement savings.

But even some people who could retire are choosing to return to work as the pandemic ebbs.

When the Long Island fitness studio where she worked as a spinning instructor shut down early in the pandemic, Jackie Anscher lost both a job and a part of her identity. In an interview with The New York Times that summer, she described what seemed at the time like an abrupt end to her career as “a forced retirement.”

But after spending the beginning of the pandemic reorganizing her life and re-evaluating her priorities, Ms. Anscher, 60, has begun teaching spin classes again as a substitute instructor at a local gym, and she is looking for a more regular gig. Her husband is already retired — “he’s been waiting for me to go fishing,” she said — and the couple could afford for her to stop working. But she isn’t ready to hang up her cycling shoes.

“I liked what I had. I loved who I was in front of the room,” she said. “It’s about my mental health. For me, it’s about preserving me.”

Older workers weren’t any more likely than younger workers to leave the labor force early in the pandemic. But economists had reason to think they might be slower to return. Unemployed workers in their 50s and 60s typically have a harder time finding jobs than their younger counterparts, because of ageism and other factors. And unlike after the 2008-9 recession, when depressed housing prices and high debt levels left many people with little choice but to keep working, in this crisis prices of both homes and financial assets kept rising, providing a financial cushion to some people nearing retirement age.

The share of Americans reporting that they were retired did rise sharply in the spring of 2020. But retirement is not an irreversible decision. And research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City has found that at the pandemic’s onset, there was a steep drop in the number of people leaving retirement to return to work, attributable at least partly to fear of the virus and a lack of job opportunities, swelling the ranks of the retired.

 

As the economy has reopened and the public health situation has improved, these “unretirements” have rebounded and have recently returned roughly to their prepandemic rate, according to an analysis of government data by Nick Bunker of the Indeed Hiring Lab.

The return of older workers has been concentrated among those in their late 50s and early 60s, people who were still several years or more away from retirement when the pandemic began. The employment rate among those 65 and older fell more sharply and has been much slower to recover. That suggests that the pandemic might have led some people who were already closer to retirement to accelerate those plans, and that the greater health risks they faced may have made them less likely to return to work while the virus continues to circulate.

Still, the return of early retirees to the labor force is a reminder that rising wages and abundant job opportunities can draw in workers who might otherwise remain on the sidelines, Mr. Bunker said. The labor force shrank during the last recession, too, and some economists were quick to declare that workers were gone for good. But many people eventually came back during the strong job market that preceded the pandemic: It provided opportunities to people with disabilities and criminal records, to people with little formal education and to people who had taken time away from work to raise children or to care for ailing parents.

That pattern may be repeating itself, but on a much more compressed timeline.

“Don’t underestimate labor supply,” Mr. Bunker said. “Don’t count out the possibility that people want and need work. It has happened much more quickly than what we saw after the global financial crisis, but the broad principle is the same.”

When Tad Greener lost his job managing utilities for a Utah university in late 2019, he wasn’t worried at first about finding a new one — the unemployment rate, after all, was near a 50-year low. But Mr. Greener had hardly begun his search when the pandemic hit and the bottom fell out of the economy. Suddenly, he was 60 years old, unemployed and facing the worst labor market in nearly a century.

Mr. Greener eased up on his job search during the first phase of the pandemic, in part because of some health issues unrelated to the coronavirus. By spring of 2021, he was ready to work again, but he had little luck applying for jobs. He thinks many prospective employers were turned off by the combination of his age and his time out of the work force.

“It’s a daunting task to be 62 years old, to be unemployed for over a year and to try and find work,” Mr. Greener said. “There were times where I didn’t think I was ever going to be able to go back to work.”

As the economy reopened, however, many businesses struggled to hire enough workers to meet the surge in demand. That prompted employers to consider candidates they might otherwise have dismissed, or to look for ways to attract people who could work but weren’t looking.

In Mr. Greener’s case, he learned about a new “returnship” program from the State of Utah that was meant to help people who had been out of the labor force get back to work. Last fall, he was accepted into the program, landing a part-time job in the state Office of Energy Development, which quickly turned into a permanent, full-time job. Now that he is back at work, Mr. Greener says he plans to stay until he is 67, or perhaps longer if he stays healthy.

“Every day I hear about how there aren’t enough workers available,” Mr. Greener said. “There are a lot of older workers that are being written off, or at least finding it much more difficult to get back into the workplace, who have a lot of years and things to offer.”