How millions of jobless Americans can afford to ditch work

The unfortunate part of this is those that retired usually (at least where I am) arent replaced with like-kind. Generally, Ive seen those positions downgraded to hire someone cheaper while still doing the same load ... or just eliminated altogether because redundant or vendor (despite this usually being a false assessment). So the job that is now open and advertised isnt as enticing as the position vacated.

"Lots of people retiring early" sounds like news to me. It suggests a pretty radical change in the economy.

The question will be how long they're prepared for. I'm sure many of those 55 year olds are doing fine today. But they don't qualify for Social Security yet, and may spend down a good chunk of their savings. If they spend it down to zero, they could be in trouble. Worse, if it means that they're accelerating the depletion of the social security trust fund.

That's just one of many interesting open questions. Do we have younger people to step into those jobs? Do we even need some of those jobs, or can we do without some of them? Does this push to increase wages?

"Early retirement" could explain a huge chunk of what's going on in the economy today and set up a lot of challenges for tomorrow. That makes it a lot more newsworthy than a lot of stuff I see in the papers.

It would seem that living off savings would be risky and stressful in its own way.