Why Our Retired Parents in New York Are Unretiring

If it feels you’ve noticed an influx of older New Yorkers heading back to work, it’s not in your imagination. They are back in the workforce and for good reason.

I keep hearing from more and more of my friends who have retirement-age parents that many who retired have since re-entered the workforce because what they once thought they would be able to live on in retirement is now not enough.

Caring.com, in collaboration with Pollfish, surveyed Americans between the ages of 62 and 85 to understand how many seniors are either delaying retirement or rejoining the workforce due to inflation.

What the survey found was that our parents, who should be enjoying their retirement after spending their entire lives working, are now scooping up jobs as one in three employees say that because of inflation, they have “unretired,” returning to work after retirement.

52 Percent of unretired seniors say that inflation is the primary reason that they had to return to work and what’s more is that almost half of all retirement-age individuals don’t plan on being able to retire anytime in the next five years.

While 52 percent of unretired seniors say that they have to return to work, almost half of all seniors currently holding down a job say they don’t think that they’ll be able to retire anytime within the next five years.

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But wait – there’s more. 14 percent of retired seniors say there is an excellent chance that they will have to return to work and the most gut-wrenching thing to come out of the study? One in five seniors say that they are living in fear of becoming homeless.