COVID Retirements?

[dr_codex]

I realize that this is going to be location specific, but my place has already seen two waves:

1. People who mused / planned / dream about retirement about now anyway, and did it.
2. People who mused / planned / dreamed about retirement in the near future (2-3 years), and expedited it.

Now, we're seeing the swell of the third wave:

A. People who had no plan to retire, but have no wish either to enter COVID classrooms, or to teach remotely.

My place is oddball, so I don't know if this can be extrapolated. So, hivemind, can it? Are you seeing higher than usual retirements? For this unscientific survey, let's exclude buyouts and such.

dc

[downer]

I have a friend in his 50s who has been thinking of retiring for a few years. But he is only willing to do so if there is a buyout. I suspect that COVID might make him willing to accept a less generous buyout though.

I'm wondering why buyouts should be excluded from the survey. Or maybe there could be two categories in the survey, buyout and no-buyout.

[polly_mer]

At my non-academic employer, we've been expecting a wave of retirements for about five years because of demographics and have been hiring to have overlap in key positions. Retirements have picked up in the past quarter, but it's still not the wave of about 40% of employees who are eligible.

We're still mostly operating in remote mode with accommodation for nearly everyone who asks.  People we'd prefer not retire for another couple years until their replacements are ready are in the driver's seat for the moment.

[Dismal]

I haven't heard of any unexpected retirements this fall in my department due to COVID.  My U is offering a retirement incentive where they will pay you a lump sum equal to two years worth of the U's contribution to your health insurance if you agree to retire in December or earlier. I haven't researched retirement incentives but this one didn't seem that generous.

[Vkw10]

We had typical wave of retirements announced in Spring semester, then people waited due to rumor of offer. The offer turned out to be a modest voluntary separation offer with warnings that it was not "early retirement" offer, so you still needed to meet state rules to access retirement benefits like retiree health insurance.

We're in second wave now, which is a mix of people who were thinking about retirement in next couple of years and a few faculty who don't like any of the teaching options for fall semester. I'm at an R2, with an R1 and another R2 within an hour's drive, as well as several smaller institutions. Only two higher education institutions in our area didn't announce layoffs and/or furloughs earlier this summer, mine and a community college. Those nearby layoffs and furloughs, plus the warning that "voluntary separation" does not equal "early retirement" definitely affected faculty decisions.

We also have a wave of staff leaving, especially tech support. I hear the tech support wave is partially because it's been very hard to get vacation leave approved, even asking a month in advance. Tech support is still in high-demand in this area, so they aren't worried about finding work.

[Stockmann]

I've not heard of anything unusual regarding retirements from my employer. However, there was a buyout last year, so most people eligible for retirement and on the fence or wanting to retire soonish probably retired then.
Next year, however, it will get "interesting" (in the sense of "May you live in interesting times!"), since for the remainder of 2020 my employer is almost certainly financially safe, but 2021 is hugely uncertain. Legally, the low hanging fruit here is tenured faculty bonuses, which the union wouldn't fight for - if these are substantially cut or the criteria for elegibility are made substantially more stringent, a lot of the older tenured faculty might decide to retire. The bonuses, combined with the fact that the pay structure here heavily favors older faculty, mean that my employer has huge incentives to push older faculty to retire. Obviously, being contingent, my own job isn't safe, but the institution has no financial incentive to get rid of us in large numbers - we're dirt cheap compared to the tenured faulty, esp. the older tenured faculty, and we tend to teach the bigger class sections (because the tenured faculty don't want to) - so per hour taught per student we're way, way cheaper. Unless, of course, my employer chooses to shut down entire programs, in which case I suppose they could get rid of a lot of contingent folks without increasing the teaching load of tenured faculty. Or it could decide to get rid both of entire programs and entire departments, in which case it could get rid of folks in every category - pre-covid my department's main major had rising demand, and we teach substantial numbers of students majoring in something else (intro courses, not gen eds), but still.