Many Workers in Public Sector Retiring Sooner

[alp227]

Source: NYT

As states and cities struggle to resolve paralyzing budget shortfalls by sending workers on unpaid furloughs, freezing salaries and extracting larger contributions for health benefits and pensions, a growing number of public-sector workers are finding fewer reasons to stay.

The numbers of retirees are way up in Wisconsin, where more applications to retire have been filed this year than ever before. Workers in California’s largest public employee pension system have retired at a steadily increasing rate over the last five fiscal years. In New Jersey, thousands more teachers, police officers, firefighters and other public workers filed retirement papers during the past two years than in the previous two years.

In part, the flood of retirements reflects a broader demographic picture. Baby boomers, wherever they work, have begun reaching the traditional retirement age.

But increasingly workers fear a permanent shift away from the traditional security of government jobs, and they are making plans to get out now, before salaries and retirement benefits retreat further.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/us/more-public-sector-workers-are-retiring-sooner.html

[CarmanK]

1. Not a surprise. The repugs have made public service a dirty word.

Public employees are treated like chattel. They have become the victims of any failed public policy and they have been deionized to a level of discontent. They are tired of being the targets of the radicals, while the dems sit by and let it happen.

[Megahurtz]

6. Exactly Correct. n/t

[ProgressiveProfessor]

2. They are seeing fewer than originally planned for in many Federal areas

Typically Feds would retire and then come back as support contractors. However, with support contractors being hit hard by the cutbacks, many Feds are staying on.

[RobinA]

3. This Public Employee

won't be retiring soon because I can't, but this is definitely true. I came here because I wanted a pension and a union. I got both, but they have upped the amount of time it takes to vest after I came. They were having trouble filling jobs before and they just took one of the few remaining advantages to working for the state and made it take twice as long to qualify.

[Historic NY]

4. When the hand is writing on the wall......read it....

I got hurt on the job a few years back. I had planned to work until I was 55 but I'm glad i'm gone now. Things changed in my field and we all are seeing that. I was at a retirement luncheon recently and the consensus was most are glad to be gone. The attacks against pensions, cutbacks, changes in working conditions, contract negotiations and loss of later benefits makes it a good time to go.

[shanti]

5. this was me

i've been retired from the state for almost a year now....and love it.

[quaker bill]

7. This speaks to me

Though I am looking at 2 to 7 more years. If the economy gets turned around, I am ready to head back to the private side, where the really big bucks happen to be, for me anyway. This tea party led "lay off the public workers then beat up on the remnant" has gotten sort of depressing.