The Baby Boomers Are Doing Just That. Booming.

The January 2019 jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) calculated that the U.S. unemployment rate stood at 4 percent and the economy added 304,000 new jobs, with almost 40 percent of all employment gains driven by Americans 55 and older, according to Forbes . Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis said the net increase in employment between 2000 and 2017 was concentrated among workers 55 and older. The job market's prosperity is directly related to older workers' lengthening participation in the labor pool, with one hypothesis suggesting the Great Recession's effect on older workers gave them a financial impetus to stay employed. Yet an analysis of data over the previous 20 years shows the workforce participation rate for all employees has fallen more than four percentage points, while younger workers, ages 16 to 19, have experienced the sharpest drop in workforce participation, nearly 17 percentage points. However, workers aged 55 to 64 have expanded their participation nearly six percentage points, and those over 65 saw an even bigger increase of 7.7 percentage points from 1998 to 2018. BLS forecasts that baby boomers' workforce growth rate will overtake all other age groups between 2014 and 2024.