Americans Increasingly Working Past Age 65

Plans to retire pushed back

The percentage of Americans 65 and over who are still working has continued to increase in the past five years. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 18.5 percent were working in 2012. Additionally, research has shown that people ages 55 to 64 are more likely to keep working for a few extra years because they didn’t think they could afford to retire. At one time, from the late 1940s through the mid-1980s, the percentage of people over age 65 who were in the labor force fell as they took advantage of pensions and Social Security payments. Now, however, people work longer and wait to collect more lucrative benefits, but more companies have moved from pension-type retirement plans to 401(k)-type plans. Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for  Retirement Research at Boston College said that those still working partly do it by choice: "When you’re talking with people older than 65, people are healthier and better educated and jobs are less physically demanding, and that makes it attractive to stay in the labor force." (TODAY)

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