In 2023, Social Security recipients got a raise. A cost of living adjustment (COLA), which is written into the law, increased benefits payments by 8.7%. This is a substantial increase. By comparison, in 2022, the COLA was 5.9% and, in 2020, (the adjustment arrived before the COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing) it was a little over 1%.
But in 2023, a year that began with an inflation rate of more than 6% — and came on the heels of years of steadily-increasing prices for housing, food, goods and services, medical care and fuel — it might feel like too little, too late to those who rely on this bedrock of our nation’s care system for seniors.
Older Americans used to be able to rely on numerous streams of income when they retired. Now, fewer workplaces and industries offer retirement options. Pensions are a thing of the past. Even when other programs, like 401(k) matching, are available, many workers don’t take advantage, often because they can’t afford it.
As a result, about half of Boomers have literally zero savings. That means that if and when they do exit the workforce they’ll be living solely off family members, the community and programs like Social Security. That has placed an enormous burden on Gen X, Millennials and soon Gen Z. Our parents and grandparents are approaching the end of their earning days, and many of us can’t afford to support them through it.
Trying to find housing and care for a person with little to no savings is nearly impossible. A recent Washington Post article called senior care “crushingly expensive” and stated that Boomers “aren’t ready.”
“A wave of Americans has been reaching retirement age largely unprepared for the extraordinary costs of specialized care,” the article stated. As a result, it will be up to “individual families [to] shoulder an increasingly ruinous financial burden with little help from stalemated policymakers.”
It’s no wonder, then, that Gen Z has such positive feelings about unions. Union membership has been one of the most essential ways that Americans have locked in a comfortable, dignified retirement — and ensured that they weren’t reliant on their children for their basic needs. Younger generations, already saddled with student debt and higher-than-predicted housing costs, don’t have much money to throw around, and as they’re having children of their own, this “sandwich generation” is looking for more proactive solutions.
Unfortunately, it’s these same Boomers who continually elect leaders that see Social Security as an “entitlement” or something that can be trimmed. It’s hard not to wonder how promises of austerity and reducing “welfare” will land once the Boomers retire and find themselves dependent on other people.
Hanna Brooks Olsen is a writer living in Portland.
Read more of the Sept. 6-12, 2023 issue.