Stacie Haller, an executive consultant, recently met with a former business owner from the early 1980s. He had sold his company, taken up golf and discovered something about himself: he found golf incredibly boring.
And now, even though he doesn’t have to, he is back on the job market.
“I’m so important,” he had told Haller, “I’m still in it.”
Haller is a senior himself. She says she could have stayed retired after being furloughed from her recruiting job during the pandemic. Instead, she began independently consulting with senior executives and Resume Builder. Now? She works part-time and earns the same as before.
“I’m happier in my career now than ever before,” she says.
According to recentquestionnaireof the more than 3,500 U.S. seniors according to Resume Builder, about one in eight have returned to work or plan to do so as of December 2025. Another 16% never retired and 4% were actively applying for jobs.
Another study, conducted by a financial consulting firmThe motley foolOctober 2025 found that 54% of the 2,000 Americans receiving Social Security benefits have “returned to work or considered returning” because Social Security benefits are so low.
But, as in the case of Haller’s former business owner, that’s not the only factor leading to what some call “disengagement.”
“The top answer usually has to do with money, but it’s not the clear winner,” says Robert Brokamp, senior retirement advisor at The Motley Fool. “There are a lot of people who go back to work because they were bored. They got lonely. They needed something to do.”
“When you’re older, you actually have the opportunity to try something new – or have less stress at work,” says Haller.
While these reasons for keeping seniors in the workforce may have applied in the past, they are now arguably driving a trend more because of the way work has changed since the pandemic: Flexible, hybrid, and remote work options make it much easier for seniors, who may have health or mobility issues, to stay in the workforce.
Rising costs of living
Brokamp says there is “no doubt” that people between the ages of 60 and 80 are increasingly returning or continuing to work. As people live well into their 90s, they have a lot more time to save for, especially in today’s economy.
In Resume Builder’s survey, 54% of respondents attributed continuing or resuming work after an initial retirement to the high cost of living. “I don’t know a person who doesn’t go to the grocery store and walk out and say, ‘Are you kidding me?’” Haller says.
Such daily costs also increase the concerns seniors have about Social Security and Medicare, which 26% and 19%, respectively, in that survey cited as their reasons for working. Although Social Security recently experienced a 2.8% cost-of-living increase, 54% of recipients told The Motley Fool that wasn’t high enough. With inflation at 2.7%, that increase may seem sufficient, but the problem, says Brokamp, is that inflation often works out differently for working professionals than for retirees.
“The health care inflation rate is well over 3%,” he says — a major expense for seniors, who not only visit the doctor more often but also tend to spend more on prescription drugs than their younger counterparts.
Other financial factors pushing seniors to return to work include not having enough saved for retirement, having to pay off debt (medical or otherwise) and having to support their children, according to Resume Builder.
This picture obviously looks different within different asset classes. Geoffrey Sanzenbacher, a researcher at Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research, has found that people who have earned less income during their careers and therefore don’t have as much “emergency savings” can be “pulled back into the labor market” with a single “health shock” to themselves or a family member.
Unlike other studies, Sanzenbacher’sresearchpoints to a low unemployment rate of 1.9%, which he says comes from looking at narrower timelines (such as seniors working at the time of the survey, not within that year).
“Right now you have a perfect storm of reasons why the unemployment rate could be low,” Sanzenbacher says. This includes a less-than-stellar job market (more people retire in good labor markets because they have more opportunities, he says) and a high stock market. So retirees who rely on 401Ks, for example, should be well in the black.
According to him, this suggests that people who are no longer retiring should do so because they really need the money.
Continued vitality, personal fulfillment
When seniors voluntarily reenter the workforce after retirement, they probably do so to have some fun – and may be more likely to do more independent work, such as starting their own business, where you are not dependent on a job.
Haller mentions seniors who started their own Etsy shops after retiring, and Sanzenbacher brings up the idea of a retired worker who always wanted to be a tour guide finally fulfilling that dream. The desire to return to work and try something new, Sanzenbacher says, “is very common among higher-income or highly educated workers.” Usually, he adds, those post-career jobs relate to the former retiree’s original career.
“They were lawyers, and now they are arbitration judges who work one day a week on Zoom,” Sanzenbacher suggests, “or they were teachers, and now they are tour guides.” Sometimes these resubmissions are part of long-term plans. Other times, Sanzenbacher says, “it may be true [from] the realization that retirement is not as fun as people thought.”
“The evidence on whether retirement is good for us is very mixed, and it really depends on where you retire and where you retire,” Brokamp says. “Many people have boring, stressful, and hard jobs, and retirement is very good for them. On the other hand, many people had decent jobs that they actually enjoyed, and when they retire they feel adrift.”
This is true for many seniors with whom Haller speaks about retirement. After ‘enjoying working’, Resume Builder survey respondents were 54% in describing non-financial factors such as ‘fighting boredom’ and ‘socialising’ as key reasons for continuing to work or returning to work in retirement.
Mark Brodsky, 72, director of Field Associate Learning at Lowe’s, has little idea of retirement, although people often ask him when he will. “I usually say without missing a beat, ‘The day I no longer have value to offer and/or my value is not needed or wanted.’” This could mean I never retire.
“Did Picasso stop painting?” he asks. ‘I have spent fifty years developing my craft… Why would I put that on the shelf?’
Flexible working, more options
For example, Haller says she can work as much as she does because remote or hybrid work has become such a norm. “Our bodies age,” says Haller. “To be honest, I no longer take the commuter train for two hours a day.”
The flexibility that often comes with remote or part-time work is in line with what most seniors returning to work after retirement are looking for. “I don’t know any 70- or 75-year-old who really wants a high-pressure job when they go back to work,” says Haller, and they should make this clear to employers if they’re looking for the kind of work they should be hired for (rather than working independently like Haller).
Haller suggests that seniors tell hiring managers that they are looking for more relaxed roles than in their previous careers. Otherwise, hiring might assume that seniors are looking for the same high salaries they retired with, and don’t want to spend so much money on an employee who is unlikely to stay in the job market for long.
“We need to overcome that objection,” says Haller, by making it explicit to employers that salaries commensurate with full-time jobs of the past are not what “non-retirees” are asking for. Make that known in cover letters or networking conversations, Haller suggests, and emphasize the benefits you bring to the office, even if you won’t necessarily stay in it as long as younger workers.
Retiring seniors have likely “seen every situation in the job market,” Haller says, and can keep a cool head when they encounter problems while providing valuable guidance to younger colleagues.
Brodsky calls this “scar tissue”: “Life gives you bumps and bruises, and scar tissue is actually a hallmark… If I were hiring a senior executive for important work, I would want to hire someone who has scar tissue.”
Regardless of the reasons for returning to work, the overall message is clear.
“We don’t go out to pasture anymore when we turn 65,” says Haller. “We now have choices.”
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