Dr. Oz Proposes Americans Work One Year Longer to Boost Economy

Working one extra year before retirement could pump an extra 3 trillion dollars into the U.S. economy, according to Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The claim, made at an event last month, has reignited debate over whether nudging Americans to delay retirement is actually good economic policy or simply wishful thinking.

What Oz Actually Proposed

Oz framed the idea around a simple timing problem. Medicare does not kick in until age 65, and many workers stop working before that milestone, before Social Security payments start too. His pitch: have the average American start working a year earlier out of high school, or retire a year later, and the combined effect would generate 3 trillion dollars for the economy. He argued that older workers are often healthy, capable and still have plenty of drive left, so keeping them employed longer would also help shore up Medicare and Social Security finances and ease pressure on the federal debt.

Not Everyone Agrees More Work Means More Growth

Teresa Ghilarducci, an economics professor at the New School, pushed back on that logic in a December 2024 interview with Investopedia. Her point was that adding older workers to the labor force does not automatically raise productivity, especially if their output is already declining with age and younger workers remain underemployed as a result. She put it bluntly: seven year olds working would technically raise GDP too, but that is not the standard anyone actually wants to use. Economic wealth, she argued, is not measured by output alone. Quality of life matters just as much, which complicates any plan built purely around squeezing more years of labor out of the workforce.

62.6 Years Is the Current Average Retirement Age for Men

Figures from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College put the average retirement age at 62.6 for men and 64.6 for women as of 2024. Those numbers have crept upward over recent decades, driven by longer life expectancies, fewer physically demanding jobs, and a rising full retirement age for Social Security. But that climb appears to be leveling off. Alicia Munnell, a senior advisor at the Center for Retirement Research, wrote in a 2025 report that the gains from working longer have been substantial, but the trend may have run its course without some new incentive to shift behavior.

Why Many People Retire Before They Plan To

A 2025 survey from the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies found that among middle class retirees who left the workforce before 65, 54 percent cited employment related reasons, things like layoffs, forced retirement or being unable to find work. Another 31 percent pointed to health problems. That data underscores a gap between policy goals and personal circumstances: encouraging people to work an extra year assumes they have the choice to do so, and for a large share of retirees, that choice was never really theirs. Health setbacks and job loss do not respect economic projections, and no incentive structure changes that reality for someone whose employer eliminates their position at 58 or whose body simply cannot keep up with the job anymore.