Publication

Whom Do the Retirement Age and Continued Employment Protect?

Institute for Reform Issue Brief 2026-34 (October 16, 2026), Part 6 of the "Politics and Generations" series, asks whom the retirement age and continued employment protect. The statutory minimum retirement age at ordinary workplaces is 60, and an estimated 39.4% of wage workers aged 56 to 60 are direct targets of a retirement age extension; the likelihood rises with establishment size, while 58.2% of those covered belong to establishments with fewer than 100 workers. Those who reached the retirement age are people who worked long in one job, and most of them are men. The jobs of people now working change around age 60, people who neither work nor receive a pension are most numerous at ages 60 to 62, and domestic studies are divided on the effect of the 2016 mandatory retirement age of 60 on the employment of younger age groups.