CHICAGO — Americans are changing the game plan for retirement, with millions laboring right past the traditional retirement age and working into their late 60s and beyond.
While the average retirement age remains 63, that standard may soon be going the way of the gold watch — a trend expected to accelerate as baby boomers close in on retirement without sufficient savings.
For 64-year-old John Lee, “retirement” bears a strong resemblance to his full-time working career — full of 40- and 50-hour weeks as an IT technical support specialist. He’s not strapped but likes the extra cash and the feeling of being needed.
But for Melissa Fodor of Colorado, a retired travel agent who works part time as a caregiver for the elderly, the extra work “keeps my head above water” and there’s no end in sight to that financial need at age 68.
Although the work is satisfying, she confides that “financially I’m kind of scared most of the time. Because what should happen if my health and my body fail?”
Growing evidence documents that people are working longer as they live longer.
Twenty-nine percent of people in their late 60s were working in 2006, up from 18 percent in 1985, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nearly 6 million workers last year were 65 or older.
Over the next decade, the number of 55-and-older workers is expected to rise at more than five times the rate of the overall workforce, the bureau reported.
Downturn a factor
A slowing economy and stock market, squeezing funds set aside for retirement, also are contributing. In an April survey conducted for AARP, 27 percent of workers age 45 and older, and 32 percent of those 55-64, said they had pushed back their planned retirement date because of the economic downturn. The telephone poll by Woelfel Research interviewed 1,002 respondents and carried a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
“We have people who are healthier, who are living longer and have more economic reasons to stay in the workforce,” said David Certner, AARP’s legislative policy director. “On the employer side, you have greater demand for experienced (older) workers. That all adds up to longer work lives.”
Extra money a boon
Lee never envisioned putting in long work weeks in his mid-60s.
The Marietta, Ga., resident battled frequent work stress before taking early retirement from Coca-Cola Co. at 55. He spent many restless nights thinking about the job and thinks the strain caused health problems in the form of fibromyalgia and chronic back pain.
But when his old employer called offering contract work, he gladly accepted. Tennis and golf hadn’t worked out as retirement hobbies, and he decided he could use the money for occasional trips and to help his children and grandchildren.
“Going back to work wasn’t the plan,” he said. “But after I retired, before they called me, I really didn’t have anything to do.”
Fodor has little choice but to keep laboring because otherwise she couldn’t pay her bills.
The Morrison woman ended her more than three-decade career as a travel agent when work dried up following the Sept. 11 attacks but hasn’t stopped working through her 60s. First she sold paint at a home improvement store for seven years. Now she puts in 17 hours a week as a certified nursing assistant and another 10 to 15 hours walking dogs and pet sitting.
Divorced and with no children, she says she will have to work “forever” to make up for a lack of savings since Social Security doesn’t go far enough to make ends meet.
Caring for seniors, a job she loves, pays just $9 an hour, and dog walking pays less. Squeezed by rising prices and still $20,000 in debt on her condo, she stopped buying meat, beer and pricier vegetables and cheeses this year and is making other cutbacks.
“I feel blessed with the good health that I have. But I’m a little bit bitter because I don’t think I should be scared financially at 68,” she said, adding that she blames only herself for not saving more.
