When the golden years include a commute

Allison Linn Senior writer • Profile • E-mail

At an age when many people start envisioning retirement, John Hanna was thinking about how he could keep on working.

“I didn’t want to retire,” he recalls.

Hanna, who is now 83, held on to his full-time job as an insurance broker until finally retiring at age 72. But without work, the Lititz, Pa., resident soon found that he was bored and restless.

And so, about a year later, Hanna went back to work as a notary for a car auction company. He continues to work two days a week and has no intention of giving it up.

“I see what happens to guys that retire and just sit around,” Hanna said. “You know, we turn to mush.”

A combination of good health, economic necessity and the other rewards of work are pushing some Americans to stay in the work force long past traditional retirement age. About 7  percent of people age 75 or older were in the labor force as of June, up from about 5 percent a decade ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That translates to more than 1.1 million people working past age 74, up from 750,000 a decade ago.

Jim Toedtman, editor of the AARP Bulletin, said he thinks what had been an unusual phenomenon is becoming more commonplace because the recession and stock market drop means more people are financially unprepared to leave their jobs at normal retirement age.

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But, he said, many people are staying in the work force because they are living longer, healthier lives and want to stay busy.

“The prospect of 30 years of golf does have sort of a dulling effect,” Toedtman said.

‘I just want to be doing something’
Non-retirees such as Hanna say the money is nice, especially now that the stock market  tumble has heavily damaged most retirement accounts. But many say they are equally motivated by other factors, such as staying active, maintaining a social life and simply enjoying the work.

“I’m not going to ever retire … because I don’t want to,” said Edward Money, 76. Money works as a greeter at a Wal-Mart in Middletown, Del., although he could afford to live on his pension and other income.

“I get up every morning and I feel good, and I just want to always be doing something,” he said.

Toedtman said some people are also staying on the job because there is simply nobody to replace them. That includes people in very specialized medical fields or those who run their own small business.

The general trend through much of the 20th century was toward retiring earlier, said David Blau, an economics professor at Ohio State University. But that trend reversed course in the late 1980s, and people have been waiting longer to retire ever since, he said.

Blau’s research has shown that the majority of older workers are well-educated people who are doing something they want to keep doing. He said another important factor is job flexibility that allows older workers to work part-time or follow a less rigid schedule.

You don’t necessarily need a glamorous job to want to keep working. Ashton Applewhite, who is writing a book about people over age 80 who work, said most people she’s talked to say they keep working because they enjoy what they do, even if the job doesn’t seem fun and creative to others.

“It gives them a sense of who they are in the world, which may be a continuation of who they were when they were younger, and it makes them feel that they are contributing” she said.

‘Do I really want to retire?’
Phil Schlosser, 75, always thought he’d stop working in his mid-60s. But the closer he got to age 65, the more he said he wondered, “Do I really want to retire?”

Ten years later, Schlosser still works full-time in accounts receivable for a low-income apartment complex in Seattle. The job gives structure to his life and offers him health benefits as well as a comfortable financial cushion.

Schlosser has taken some vacations, including a three-week trip to Europe a few years back. If he retired, he said he might pursue his other passion, creative writing. But like many older workers, Schlosser said he’s grateful to have found an employer that has been supportive of him working into his later years. He hopes to keep at it until he's at least 80.

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