The New Reality of Working Into Your Golden Years: Why Retirement Has Become a Luxury Many Can’t Afford

A Two-Hour Commute at Nearly 70

Every weekday morning, as the sun begins to rise over the Atlantic Ocean near her Long Beach, New York home, Myndie Friedman starts a journey that would exhaust people half her age. At nearly 70 years old, she boards a 7:30 a.m. bus that takes her to the train station, beginning a grueling two-hour commute to her administrator job at a Manhattan medical office. The journey involves a roughly hour-long train ride into Midtown, followed by a subway trip and a 10-minute walk to her workplace. Then, at the end of her workday, she faces another two-hour journey back home. It’s an exhausting routine that most people her age would expect to have left behind years ago, yet Friedman has no plans to quit. The reason is painfully straightforward: her monthly Social Security check covers only about one-third of her living expenses. As a widow trying to maintain her quality of life, she needs to earn the remaining two-thirds somewhere, and that somewhere is her full-time job. Her situation isn’t unique or even unusual anymore—it’s becoming the new normal for millions of older Americans who find themselves unable to afford the retirement they spent decades working toward.

The Growing Crisis of Working Seniors

Friedman represents a rapidly expanding segment of the American population: older adults who find retirement financially impossible or who must return to work after initially retiring. According to federal labor data and research from Pew Research, nearly one in five adults aged 65 and older is currently employed or actively searching for work—the highest percentage we’ve seen in decades. These workers span every industry, geographic region, and educational background, and most describe their employment not as a fulfilling choice but as an absolute financial necessity. The numbers tell a sobering story: the average Social Security benefit in 2026 is approximately $2,071 per month, but according to SoFi Bank, the typical single adult needs a baseline of $4,641 monthly to cover basic expenses—and that’s before accounting for phone bills, home repairs, medical expenses, or any of life’s little extras like birthday gifts for grandchildren. For many older Americans, this financial gap isn’t just a challenge; it’s an unbridgeable chasm that forces them back into the workforce during years they expected to spend enjoying the fruits of their lifetime of labor. As Friedman poignantly put it, “Rising costs are on my mind, and they’re just going to go higher. You have to eat. You have to have healthcare. But when you retire, you don’t only want ‘have-tos.’ I’d like to enjoy my life.” Her words capture the frustration of millions who find themselves trapped between survival and the retirement dream they were promised.

How We Got Here: Decades in the Making

This crisis didn’t happen overnight—it’s been building for decades, representing a fundamental shift in the American workforce and retirement landscape. Back in 1985, the labor force participation rate for Americans 65 and older hit a historic low of just under 11%, suggesting that retirement at that age was truly the norm. However, over the past twenty years, we’ve witnessed a dramatic reversal: the employment rate among workers in this age group has skyrocketed by 117%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Looking forward, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the 75-and-older workforce will grow faster than any other age group in the labor market, with an estimated 97% increase between 2020 and 2030. The CDC identifies the country’s aging population as a primary driver of this workforce transformation, but there’s more to the story than simple demographics. Americans are living longer than previous generations—which should be celebrated—but many older adults discover that their retirement savings haven’t kept pace with both their extended lifespans and rising living costs. The math is brutally simple: a nest egg that might have comfortably funded 15 years of retirement becomes woefully inadequate when it must stretch across 25 or 30 years. The situation is even more dire when you examine the actual savings numbers. According to a recent report from the National Institute on Retirement Security, a nonpartisan think tank, the average American worker has saved less than $1,000 for retirement. This figure includes both people with employer-sponsored retirement plans and the approximately 56 million workers who don’t have access to such plans. Even among workers who do have retirement savings, the median balance is just $40,000—hardly enough to fund decades of retirement in an era of rising costs. Meanwhile, a 2024 AARP survey revealed that 20% of Americans aged 50 and older have no retirement savings whatsoever, while 70% worry that prices will increase faster than their income.

Finding the Silver Lining: Not Everyone Is Miserable

While the statistics paint a concerning picture, not every older worker views their situation as purely a hardship. Helen Cuocci, who is in her 70s, spends most of her workday on her feet, stocking shelves and operating the register at a CVS pharmacy in Connecticut. She’s been with CVS for 18 years, a position she took after spending four decades working as an administrative assistant. Cuocci has chosen to focus on the positive aspects of continuing to work well past traditional retirement age. “I never thought I would get a retail job,” she explained. “I always thought I’d be sitting at a little desk with my cup of coffee and just on my computer. But this is really nice. You’re more active, and you see more people.” For Cuocci, the paycheck is important but it’s only part of the equation. Her husband requires expensive medication, and her full-time status at CVS provides the couple with health benefits that reduce his prescription costs to an affordable level. These benefits make a tremendous difference in their quality of life and financial stability. “We own a home, we have two cars and we like to travel,” she said. “Without working at CVS, I couldn’t do all these things.” Cuocci’s perspective highlights an important dimension of the older worker phenomenon: while financial necessity drives many back to work, the experience isn’t universally negative. Some find renewed purpose, social connections, and even unexpected fulfillment in their later-career jobs, even if those positions are quite different from what they imagined retirement would look like.

Reinvention and the “Un-Retired” Generation

Many seniors find themselves shifting to entirely different types of work during their retirement years, sometimes discovering unexpected new chapters in their professional lives. Alan Bergman, a 71-year-old from Somers, New York, spent most of his career running a commercial printing company before retiring shortly after selling his business in 2018. However, retirement didn’t sit well with Bergman—he felt restless and worried that his savings might not adequately support both him and his wife through what could be decades of retirement. Rather than return to his previous industry, he launched an entirely new venture as a personal historian, working from his home office to interview other older adults and privately publish their life stories. “I never expected it, but this chapter is the most fulfilling one yet,” Bergman reflected, suggesting that sometimes necessity can lead to unexpected opportunities. Geoffrey Sanzenbacher, an associate professor of economics at Boston College and a researcher at the Center for Retirement Research, includes Bergman among the growing ranks of “un-retired” Americans—people who initially left the workforce but later returned. Sanzenbacher notes that older workers are most likely to re-enter the labor force when the economy is strong and jobs are plentiful. Workers “tend to un-retire when it’s easiest to do so,” he explained, though he acknowledges that re-entering the workforce means competing with younger job candidates who may be perceived as having more energy, recent training, or fewer potential health concerns. For older adults who need to resume working to afford basic necessities, this competitive disadvantage may mean accepting positions in industries completely different from their previous careers, sometimes in physically demanding roles such as retail that require extensive standing and constant customer interaction—jobs that can be particularly challenging for aging bodies.

The Undervalued Experience of Older Workers

Despite the challenges, experts argue that the skills and experience older workers bring to the table are consistently underestimated and undervalued by employers and society at large. Catherine Fisher, a career expert at LinkedIn, emphasizes this point: “The older generation has so much experience that they can bring to the table. Communication, adaptability, leadership—those are skills that you acquire over time.” These aren’t abilities that can be taught in a training program or learned from a textbook; they’re developed through years of navigating workplace challenges, managing relationships, solving problems, and adapting to changing circumstances. Older workers often bring a level of professionalism, reliability, and institutional knowledge that can be invaluable to employers, yet age discrimination remains a persistent barrier in hiring. The situation facing older Americans who must work past traditional retirement age reflects broader systemic issues in how we structure retirement security, healthcare access, and economic support for aging populations. Social Security, designed as one leg of a three-legged retirement stool (along with pensions and personal savings), was never intended to be the sole source of retirement income, yet for many Americans, that’s exactly what it has become. Traditional pensions have largely disappeared from the private sector, replaced by 401(k) plans that shift investment risk to individual workers. Meanwhile, wages for many workers haven’t kept pace with inflation, making it increasingly difficult to save adequately for retirement while meeting current expenses. Healthcare costs continue to rise faster than general inflation, consuming an ever-larger share of retiree budgets. The result is millions of older Americans like Myndie Friedman, making that two-hour commute each morning not by choice but by necessity, sacrificing their golden years to maintain basic financial security and hoping they’ll have the health and energy to continue working as long as they need to.