12/17/2013 – How the Great Recession Really Affected Early Retirement

One of the worrying trends in the labor market in recent years has been a decline in the percentage of Americans working or actively looking for work. There have always been a large portion of the working-age population considered to be not in the workforce. These may include stay-at-home parents, full-time college students, or retired persons. But the relative number of these folks has been increasing for about a decade, as the more of the workforce enters retirement age. That trend accelerated during the recession, likely due to a weak economy encouraging more people to stop looking for work altogether.

But according to a new paper released today from Gary Burtless and Barry P. Bosworth of Brookings Institution, we shouldn’t blame older workers for this trend.

Read the full article at Time.