The Benefits of Late-career Job Changes
by Kim Blanton, Squared Away Blog
March 23, 2017
“Finding a new job in one’s 50s is not that easy to pull off, and it’s risky if the new employer doesn’t work out. But there’s a silver lining for people who can make the change to a job they feel is better: they work longer than those who don’t make a move.
A new study by the Center for Retirement Research, which supports this blog, finds the probability that older workers remain in the labor force until they’re 65 increases considerably – by 9 percentage points – if they voluntarily made a job change sometime during their 50s.
This lends credence to other research showing that when older workers voluntarily find a new employer, they often experience more job satisfaction and less on-the-job stress, which makes it easier to resist retiring.
The benefits from changing jobs are both psychic and practical.
More than half of U.S. workers haven’t saved enough. A few more years of work increases your monthly Social Security, reduces the number of years an under-saver has to finance in retirement, and gives retirement savings accounts a little more time to accumulate investment earnings.”