For some older Americans, retirement today means unretiring

On weekday mornings, Myndie Friedman is out the door just as the sun rises over the Atlantic Ocean, a block from her home in Long Beach, New York. 

Friedman's first stop is a 7:30 a.m. bus, which she takes to a local train station for a roughly hourlong trip into Manhattan's Midtown neighborhood. Then she hops on the subway before exiting and hoofing it 10 minutes to her office job. Total commute: two hours door to desk, along with another couple of hours for the return trip home.

It would be a challenging daily trek even if Friedman weren't almost 70 years old. 

Still, she has no plans to quit her job as an administrator in a medical office. Friedman, a widow, told CBS News her monthly Social Security check covers only a third of her living expenses. 

"I need another two-thirds to live the way I'm living," she said.

"You have to eat"

Friedman is part of a growing cohort of older Americans for whom retirement today is financially out of reach or who find themselves having to return to work to make ends meet. 

Nearly one in five adults aged 65 and older is employed or looking for work, the highest percentage in decades, according to federal labor data and Pew Research. Such workers, found across a range of industries, regions and educational levels, tend to describe their jobs not as a choice but as a financial necessity.

The average Social Security benefit in 2026 is roughly $2,071 a month. But the typical single adult spends a baseline of $4,641 a month, according to SoFi Bank, and that's before a single dollar goes toward a phone bill, home repairs or a birthday gift for a grandchild. 

For many older Americans, that financial gap amounts to a chasm, forcing them back to work at a time they expected, or at least hoped, to be retiring. 

"Rising costs are on my mind, and they're just going to go higher," Friedman said. "You have to eat. You have to have healthcare. But when you retire, you don't only want 'have-tos.' I'd like to enjoy my life."

A 2024 AARP survey found that 20% of Americans 50 and older have no retirement savings, while 70% are worried that prices will rise faster than their income. 

This crisis has been decades in the making. In 1985, the labor force participation rate for Americans 65 and older hit a historic low of just under 11%. 

Over the past 20 years, however, the employment rate among workers in that demographic has soared 117%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Bureau of Labor Statistics now projects that the 75-and-older workforce will grow faster than any other age cohort in the labor market, increasing an estimated 97% between 2020 and 2030. 

The CDC cites the country's aging population as a primary driver of this shift in the American workforce. Americans are living longer, but many older adults find that their savings haven't kept up with rising costs. The grim math is simple: A nest egg that might have funded a 15-year period of retirement falls short when stretched across 25 or 30 years.

The average American worker has less than $1,000 saved for retirement, according to a recent report from the National Institute on Retirement Security, a nonpartisan think tank. That encompasses people with employer-sponsored retirement plans, as well as the roughly 56 million workers who lack access to one. 

For workers who do have retirement savings, the median balance is $40,000, the group found.

"This is really nice"

Not all workers of retirement age describe their work lives as a hardship. Helen Cuocci, who is in her 70s, spends much of her day on her feet, stocking shelves and ringing up customers at a CVS in Connecticut. She's worked at CVS for the last 18 years, a job she took after working for 40 years as an administrative assistant. 

Cuocci likes to look on the bright side when it comes to working at an age people would normally have punched out for good.

"I never thought I would get a retail job," she told CBS News. "I always thought I'd be sitting at a little desk with my cup of coffee and just on my computer. But this is really nice. You're more active, and you see more people."

For Cuocci, the paycheck is only part of the calculation. Her husband requires an expensive medication, and her full-time status at CVS gives the couple access to health benefits that lower his prescription costs to a manageable level. 

"We own a home, we have two cars and we like to travel," she said. "Without working at CVS, I couldn't do all these things."

Old skills, new jobs

For many seniors like Cuocci, it is not uncommon to shift to a different type of work in retirement. 

Alan Bergman, a 71-year-old resident of Somers, New York, spent most of his career running a commercial printing company. He retired shortly after selling his business in 2018. 

But Bergman felt restless and was also concerned that his savings might not stretch far enough to support both him and his wife through retirement. So he launched a business as a personal historian, a job he does from his home office, interviewing other older adults to privately publish their life stories. 

"I never expected it, but this chapter is the most fulfilling one yet," Bergman said. 

Geoffrey Sanzenbacher, an associate professor of economics at Boston College and a researcher at the Center for Retirement Research, counts Bergman among the growing ranks of "un-retired" Americans. Older workers are most likely to return to the labor force when the economy is strong, Sanzenbacher said.

Workers "tend to un-retire when it's easiest to do so," he told CBS News, while noting that re-entering the workforce means competing with younger job candidates. 

For older adults who need to resume working to afford basic necessities, this may mean taking jobs in industries different from their previous careers. That can also require working in physically demanding roles, such as retail, that involve a lot of standing and customer interaction.

Catherine Fisher, a career expert at LinkedIn, said the skills older workers bring are routinely underestimated. 

"The older generation has so much experience that they can bring to the table," she said. "Communication, adaptability, leadership — those are skills that you acquire over time."