The post Why more retirement-age Americans keep working appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

When it came time for Diane Wetherington to consider retirement, reality quickly set in. The 72-year-old debated devoting her time to crafting and doting over her grandkids and even gave full-time retirement a try. But she soon realized her Social Security checks, which were smaller than her peers’ due to time she spent out of the workforce while raising children, wouldn’t be enough to cover travel or rising insurance costs on top of basic needs. Now, the Central Florida resident works part time as a remote contracting agent in local government. While she sometimes has to miss out on plans with fully retired friends, she said, continuing to work has kept her budget sound and her mind active. “It’s just getting very hard to make ends meet,” Wetherington said. “The way the world is right now, everything’s going up, up, up.” Wetherington is part of a growing body of Americans staying in the workforce past 65, once a traditional marker for retirement. This trend has buoyed the national labor market after years defined by pandemic-induced worker shortages and high quitting rates. It’s also changed the financial outlook for those who remain employed in some capacity, whether for personal satisfaction or monetary need. This trend should be more apparent than ever in 2025, when more Americans are expected to turn 65 than in any past year, according to a widely read study from the Alliance for Lifetime Income. It dubbed a multiyear period in the late 2020s as the “Peak 65 zone.” The number of employed Americans 65 and older ballooned more than 33% between 2015 and 2024, according to a CNBC analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By comparison, the labor force for all workers 16 or older has increased less than 9% during the same time…

---

Filed under: News - @ February 2, 2025 12:22 pm