As of 2006, OPM said 59,269 agency workers were expected to leave government, but only 57,649 eventually did retire.
OPM also did projections in 2008 that go through 2018 that finds more than 577,000 federal employees are expected to retire over this 10-year period.
OPM did those projections under the last administration.
"The study of occurrence and time of retirement indicates the median number of years an employee stays with the government after first becoming eligible is four years and
nearly 25 percent remain for nine years or more," OPM states in a March 2008 analysis of federal employee retirement data.
Researchers are finding that workers across all sectors are staying in their jobs longer than ever before.
Paul Taylor, the executive vice president of the Pew Research Center, says a new report his organization just issued shows just how much the American workforce is changing.
"The American workforce is getting grayer, older adults are staying in workforce longer than they used to, younger adults are waiting longer to get into the workforce," he says.
"These trends go back a decade or more and have been accelerated by the current recession and are likely to outlast the current recession so these are hardwired into the changing demography, economics and attitudes of adults related to work."
He adds that the mean age of retirement is 62 years old, but over the last 15-to-20 years, it has started to rise.
Pew found that 4-in-10 respondents say the recession is the major reason why they are working longer, and 6-of-10 respondents say they plan on delaying their decision to retire.
"A very powerful additional part of this story is attitudinal," Taylor says. "Today's 60-year-old for very good reasons feels younger, healthier and likely to have longer life than a 60-year-old a generation ago."
Pew's findings are further supported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which says 93 percent of the growing in the U.S. labor force from 2006 to 2016 will be among workers 55 or older.
Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag posted on his blog Friday similar findings to the Pew survey.
"Labor force participation among older workers has been on the upswing over the past decade—reflecting a number of factors, including better heath, changes in kinds of work and work patterns, and shifts in employer pensions from defined benefit to defined contribution and a decline in employer-provided retiree health insurance," Orszag writes.
"These factors may be particularly important for the traditional ‘early retirement' group, ages 62-64. Second, the current pattern could reflect declines in the value of retirement assets. With the shift away from defined benefit and towards defined contribution pensions like 401(k)s, changes in financial markets have a more direct effect on many workers' retirement savings. With a smaller nest egg,
older workers may thus have decided that they cannot yet afford to retire."
He goes on to write that both the employment rate and the unemployment rate for workers over 65 have increased across the current downturn.
Orszag says this suggests that not only are older workers working longer, but some older workers are choosing to remain in the workforce through a period of unemployment and search for a new job when older workers in the past may have transitioned out of the labor force.
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Source:
http://federalnewsradio.com/?nid=35&sid=1773193
... yet 'When it hits home' I do the very same thing 
:embarrest:
