According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), approximately half of the older adults who left their jobs in the UK workforce during the initial year of the Covid pandemic fell into relative poverty. The IFS, Britain's leading economics thinktank, stated that the combination of job losses during the early stages of the crisis and the increased health risks faced by older workers likely compelled many individuals to retire early. Contrary to the assumption that wealthier individuals who no longer needed to work were driving the surge in early retirement, the IFS revealed that up to 48% of individuals between the ages of 50 and 70 who left their jobs in 2020-21 had experienced relative poverty since then. Relative poverty is defined as living in households with income below 60% of the median. This study comes at a time of growing concern over worker shortages, stemming from the Covid pandemic-induced exodus from the workforce, characterized by early retirement and record levels of long-term sickness among working-age adults. Economists have identified the UK as an international outlier due to its weak employment recovery, contributing to persistent inflationary pressures as employers respond to near-record numbers of vacancies by raising starting pay. The IFS emphasized that many workers were likely forced into early retirement, even without significant sums of state or private pension income to support them, resulting in a decline in their living standards and well-being. The study found that those who stopped working reduced their weekly food expenditure by an average of £60, significantly more than those who had previously left the workforce, who, on average, did not substantially change their spending habits. Compared to previous years, older individuals who ceased working were less likely to receive pension incomes, with approximately half having no access to either private or state pensions in 2020-21, compared to 43% the previous year. Xiaowei Xu, a senior research economist at the IFS, mentioned that some of the older workers who left their jobs during the pandemic could return to the workforce if provided with suitable job opportunities, and there were indications that some were already returning. However, she emphasized that government policies supporting older workers, such as the Department for Work and Pensions' "mid-life MOT," would be critical if ministers aimed to encourage more older workers to rejoin the workforce. Xu stated, "It is often assumed that older people who left the workforce during the pandemic were wealthy individuals retiring in comfort. Our analysis shows that those who left in the first year of the pandemic experienced a sharp rise in poverty, despite overall poverty rates falling that year, and also suffered large falls in wellbeing.