The new retirement is no retirement: Baby boomers are keeping jobs well into their sixties and seventies because they ‘like going to work’

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1. The number of those who have continued to work past 65 has quadrupled since the 1980s, according to the Pew Research Center. Now, almost 20% of Americans 65 and older are employed, nearly double the share of those who were working 35 years ago. In total, there are around 11 million Americans 65 or older who are working today, accounting for 7% of all wages and salaries paid by U.S. employers. In 1987, they made up 2%.

2. Again, the Boomers will destroy everything left before they ‘dirt nap’. I’m so over this bullcrap. I’m Gen X raised by horrible narcissist boomers who still suck the life out of everything around them.

3. HOW DO THEY GET BORED?! I have literally hundreds of things I would do if I didn’t have to work, and I love my job and it’s my own business! But imagine if I had free time like RETIREMENT!

   Boring people get bored.

4. We also like to eat.

   I am 64, my Social Security (if it actually exists by the time I retire) as of next year will be about $1700 a month. My investment is solely in one proprty and one business. At this point I can’t afford to retire unless I get rid of the place to live and the way to make a living.

5. A major difficulty is taking charge of your own time after a lifetime of being told what to do and when to do it. Many people are very poor at self direction. I am also willing to bet many are lying to protect their ego when saying they don’t need the money.

6. And the boomers are mostly grandfathered in to jobs. ‘mostly’. Many younger folks will be laid off and not able to find work in their 60s/70s.

   And I restate, ‘Mostly’. Because many boomers will be laid off and unable to get a ‘high paying job’ afterwards.

7. Maybe retirement is just the bootstraps we picked up along the way

8. I don’t think they like going to work. They have to go to work.

   In an ideal world you should retire at 60 and you should be able to take social security and not be in poverty. The younger generations take over and the cycle repeats.

   But we are in an Oligarch run state where people are used up and spit out. You are meat for the grinder.

9. Honestly, good for them. If you’re capable and willing and enjoy work, then why not? For as politically correct Gen Z wants to be, forcing an older generation to retire to shore up jobs they want is textbook discrimination.

10. I just typed out a super-long comment about a handful of the most egregious examples of boomers I’d worked with who clung to their positions in education, refusing to make way while sitting at the top of the pay scale and sucking at their jobs. And a couple of them really, *really* do need to fuck off. I’m offended by how positive and upbeat this article makes this new trend sound – how amazing might it be for the educated, accomplished people in this study to find their purpose through volunteer work?

    But then I deleted my original comment when I remembered that a few of the colleagues I was thinking of delayed retirement because they’d drained their savings to gift their kids down-payments for homes, or just outright gave them the paid off house and then bought something smaller and so had a mortgage themselves again. I think there’s just not enough said in this story about the reality that a *lot* of boomers are seriously struggling and/or barely getting by, and that there are some who, given the insane housing markets and just the cost of living generally, are trying to help out their kids. The cost of living has all of us not in the same boat, but in the same storm, and some boomers use their bigger, sturdier boats to help others stay afloat.

11. Man, do I know this. We have a shift at my store who is 70 and refuses to take one day off. It would be great if A. She wasn’t a total sociopath who drives a wedge in our team and B. If she didn’t come in when she’s super sick and on the verge of dying.

    Disregarding my thoughts about her, personally, take fucking care of yourself, Jesus Christ! She refused for the longest time to get back surgery even though her condition meant that at some point she would become paralyzed. Her reason? She didn’t want to go on medical leave for 6 weeks.

    Look, if you’re gonna work a job that’s physically stressful, even if you’re young, at the very least take care of the basics like your health because you’re gonna kill yourself but not before hampering operations at the store because you’re too stubborn to realize that your body is degrading with this no-nonsense work ethic. The problem is all the young capable people don’t have it so we have to take what we can get. Fucking sad.

12. Thanks Reagan.

13. 50 years ago half of them would’ve been dead since they would’ve been smoking and died of cancer of one form or another. Today, with Lipitor, they are now living well past 70.

14. Like going to work…..nah, need to go to work because can’t afford not to.

15. Fix health care, watch people retire in droves.

16. So what happens with young people trying to enter the workforce if those jobs are still being held by the 65+?

17. thats code speak for they were dumb and didnt save money so now theyll be working forever. yeah i have no remorse if youre not honest. and if you like going to work then go volunteer somewhere for free so the next person can work a paying job because when you were that age you didnt have old people working into old age because they “like going to work”

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