For many older Americans, the golden years are still the green years. As in: they need to keep bringing in the green to make ends meet.
A new survey from Resume Builder confirms this, showing that 12% of retired Americans will go back to work this year.
In another survey, from Bankrate, 41% of adults say they don’t have enough money to fully retire. And about a quarter of Americans above the age of 50 say they expect to never retire, according to a new AARP study.
55% of those responding to a Bankrate survey said they returned to work because they needed more money. 47% said they were bored and 33% said they needed the job to get health insurance.
“I have a family. We have to have somewhere to live. We have to have food on our table so I put the pride aside,” said Janette Campbell, a retired educator who now works as a community relations specialist at a South Florida non-profit.
One big problem for retired professionals returning to work is taking a job that pays far less than what their old profession paid.
“A lot of them … don’t have the job they had before,” said Indiana Senator Mike Braun, the ranking Republican on the Senate Special Committee on Aging. “Somebody else is either filling that or maybe one there as it was. So they’re coming back to survival-type wages.”
For many, that means diving into the gig economy, according to AARP vice president Carly Roszkowski.
“Older workers (are) starting their own business (or) driving for Uber or DoorDash – jobs that didn’t exist 15-20 years ago.”
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For Campbell, it’s a matter of staying on the job as long as her family needs her.
“If I don’t laugh, I will cry, and I don’t want to cry. I want to be positive in whatever I do because I have young peoples around me that is watching me.”
