CHICAGO — There was a time when Tom Sadowski thought he’d stop working after turning 65 earlier this year. But he’s put off retirement for at least five years — and now anticipates continuing to do some work afterward.
In an illuminating sign of changing times and revised visions of retirement, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released Monday finds older Americans like Sadowski not only are delaying their retirement plans, they’re also embracing the fact that it won’t necessarily mark a complete exit from the workforce.
Some 82 percent of workers 50 and older say it is at least somewhat likely they will work for pay in retirement. And 47 percent of them now expect to retire later than they previously thought — on average nearly three years beyond their estimate when they were 40.
Men, racial minorities, parents of minor children, those earning less than $50,000 a year and those without health insurance were more likely to put off their plans.
The recession claimed Sadowski’s business and a chunk of his savings, and with four teenage daughters, the graphic designer from Sterling, Va., accepts the fact he won’t retire for another five years or more.
“At this age, my dad had already been retired 10 years and moved to Florida,” he said. “Times are different now for most people.”
About three-quarters of respondents said they have given their retirement years some or a great deal of thought. When considering factors that are very or extremely important in their retirement decisions, 78 percent of workers cited financial needs, 75 percent said health, 68 percent their ability to do their job and 67 percent said their need for employer benefits such as health insurance.
“Many people had experienced a big downward movement in their 401(k) plans, so they’re trying to make up for that period of time when they lost money,” said Olivia Mitchell, a retirement expert who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.
The shift in retirement expectations coincides with a growing trend of later-life work. Labor force participation of seniors fell for a half-century after the advent of Social Security but began picking up in the late 1990s. Older adults are now the fastest-growing segment of the American workforce; people 55 and up are forecast to make up one-fourth of the civilian labor force in 2020.
“The definition of retirement has changed,” said Brad Glickman, a certified financial planner with a large number of baby-boomer clients in Chevy Chase, Md. “Now the question we ask our clients is, ‘What’s your job after retirement?’ “
The AP-NORC Center survey was conducted Aug. 8 through Sept. 10 by NORC at the University of Chicago, with funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which makes grants to support original research and whose Working Longer program seeks to expand understanding of work patterns of aging Americans.
It involved landline and cellphone interviews in English and Spanish with 1,024 people aged 50 and older nationwide. Results from the full survey have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.
Stories of financial hardship, being laid off, health issues
Dolores Gonzalez, 57, of Coalinga, Calif., expects no luxuries in retirement. She’ll be happy if she can simply afford her $2,200 monthly mortgage payment. She used to think she would retire from teaching at 65; now she says she’ll never stop working.
She had been strained by helping to support her parents. Now she has less than $200 in savings, and she worries about sustaining herself in retirement when all she’ll have is a Social Security check.
“A lot of people don’t save because the cost of living is so high,” she said. “Retirement is not going to be comfortable. It’s going to be hard.”
David Sandersfeld, 62, of Dayville, Ore., was laid off from his park ranger job two years ago. He had hoped to stay on the job until he was 70, but his search for a new job was fruitless. So almost a decade sooner than expected, he retired.
“It came sooner than I was hoping,” he said. “The economy doesn’t need me, so I guess I’ll just retire.”
Margaret Yarborough, 86, of Scranton, S.C., had her plans thwarted by health. She had hoped to keep working as a department store sales clerk forever, but a car accident and arthritis made it impossible, so she retired a few years ago.
“I sure would like to work,” she said. “I enjoy being with people. I enjoy having the income.”
