When Retirement Comes Too Early

Joey Himelfarb estimates that in his 25 years in sales, hawking everything from Hewlett-Packard computers to cars and swimming pools, he has been laid off or downsized at least a half-dozen times.

The most recent occasion came in April, when he got a call from the chief executive officer of the start-up in northern Virginia that had hired him 10 months earlier. The company sells systems that extract data from video. Mr. Himelfarb worked remotely from his apartment in Belle Mead, N.J. “I was working my tail off,” he said. “We were busy.”

But now, the boss told him, because of the coronavirus pandemic, the company could no longer afford his mid-five-figure salary.

You will never meet a more relentlessly upbeat job-seeker. “I’m good at landing on my feet,” Mr. Himelfarb said. “I’m good at networking.” His business card reads, “Positive Beats Negative Every Day.”

But Mr. Himelfarb, 61, has never been unemployed for this long. He managed financially as long the federal relief program supplemented his $346 weekly unemployment check with an additional $600. That extra support has ended, forcing him to dip into his savings.

Economists who study the employment and retirement of older Americans are worried about people like him. Once, older workers benefited from a so-called experience premium: Because of their years on the job, they earned more than younger employees and were less likely to be laid off during downturns. But “the premium has been shrinking over time,” said Richard Johnson, an economist at the Urban Institute who studies employment and retirement among older adults.