Other major drivers behind the boom in older employees include that workers are healthier and less likely to have a disability, and face increasingly steeper financial challenges. Inflation, changes in pension systems and “less generous” Social Security benefits, Fry says, have workers feeling obligated to work longer.
Older workers "still being healthy" is survivorship bias. The ones who aren't still healthy aren't in the fucking workplace, they're either hospitalized or dead.
"Obligated." Nobody feels "obligated" to work. We feel like we will die on the fucking streets in our old age because we have a broken fucking system that discards us entirely once we are no longer able to produce economic output.
Obligated my ass, people just want to stay alive, Emmy Lucas of Forbes. Eat shit, Emmy.
They’re craving more money. We need to come to our senses before they find a way to make us live forever to work forever. If corpos could they’d copy your consciousness and make it do spreadsheets until the atmosphere burned up.
That's certainly many. I'm betting there are other craving meaning for their lives. When we define ourselves by our job, there I bet there is a percentage that find retirement uncomfortable and meaningless. They go back to work for meaning.
I’m going to be 60 this year (I’m officially a boomer, yay me) and I’m about to start a new job. I absolutely enjoy my work and there’s no way I want to retire yet. I think I’m good at it, I think I have something to give to society, I find it fulfilling and - yes - I have kids at university, so I need the cash to support them.
And before someone says ‘you can find fulfilment through volunteering’, yes - and I do plenty of that, but it doesn’t quite scratch the same itch for me.
And that's fine. But the person you see behind the counter at CVS who clearly should be enjoying retirement is not likely there because they absolutely enjoy working at CVS. That's the problem.
See, you're an example of someone older who SHOULD be working since you actually WANT to rather than HAVE to. More power to you and I hope you get to keep working for exactly as long as YOU want to!
Cases like yours isn't what's driving the increase though. A combination of economic desperation and pro-corporate gaslighting is forcing and/or coercing people who would prefer to retire to keep working many more years. THAT'S the majority situation.
Edit: I see what you’re saying about things having gotten more expensive. This wouldn’t happen if there wasn’t a need to hoard $1.2M to live through your 70s. But nope we chose this.