A new analysis by Pew Research Center finds that the share of older Americans who are working has nearly doubled since 1987.
Some are still working to pay off student loans decades later or have to provide for their grandchildren, says Loretta Barr, an associate principal and career coach at Korn Ferry. Or, they’re making up for unforeseen circumstances. “When the pandemic hit, a lot of people lost their jobs suddenly, and they had to use up their retirement savings just to survive,” she says.
For a long time there weren't any new jobs or wage growth because boomers weren't retiring due to the 07' financial crises. It took at least 5 years or more for things to really settle from that. Then the Fed never raised interest rates when they should have. Then they couldn't lower them during the pandemic and had to print a bunch of money to dig the economy out of a hole and now we're here.
It's nearly impossible to have enough saved for retirement. Inflation of costs seems to rapidly outperform actual inflation and interest on savings. So if they were told that their end goal was it's now half of what is actually needed.