May 22 (Bloomberg) — Dee Dix hesitated before she decided to retire in 2012.
"I thought, do we have enough money? How much do we need?" the 66-year-old former insurance analyst said from her home in Fort Myers, Florida. "I was a little bit leery."
Clinching the decision was profit earned on stock investments during a five-year bull market that has restored $14 trillion to U.S. equity values. Dix is among millions of baby boomers whose retirement has helped push the participation rate of working Americans to lows not seen since the 1970s.
Some people leave the labor pool and retire after giving up on the job search. Others, like Dix, pay for it with the proceeds of rallying stocks. Joblessness and labor participation levels reaching pre-recession lows are stoking debate among Federal Reserve policy makers and politicians about what's behind the swings in data underlying the most important economic barometer, employment.
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