1 in 6 retirees are considering returning to work, and 53% want remote positions

https://www.paychex.com/articles/human-resources/retirees-rejoining-the-workforce

by mfiguiere • 3 years ago

153 130 3 years ago

Infernal• 3 years ago

It would be great if the "1 in 6" number could be compared to previous years or economic conditions. "considering" is also a pretty broad term - it doesn't sound super surprising to me that 1 in 6 retirees would consider working again - if anything it sounds a bit low, compared to the folks I've known to retire over the last 30ish years.

notahacker• 3 years ago

"considering" is also a pretty broad term

Similarly, "return to work" is pretty broad. Big difference between contemplating applying for another 9 to 5 in the old industry on the old salary with the old commute and downsides and "if I could pick up some consulting projects every now and then" or "a day a week might actually be good for me" or "now if I got a call saying 'please help us with this problem'"

0cf8612b2e1e• 3 years ago

How do those numbers compare with historical averages? Presumably many people have retired to discover their savings is insufficient to support the lifestyle they had imagined. I could believe many people feel lost without work and want the external valuation.

lisper• 3 years ago

Speaking for myself, being able to work from home eliminates 80% of the things I hate(d) about working. Commutes. Having to appear to be not goofing off. Time away from family. Remote work, especially part-time remote work which is what I have been doing for the past five years, is vastly preferable to not working at all. I work when I am at my most productive, and the rest of the time I do whatever I want. It's the best of all worlds.

mattw2121• 3 years ago

"For this campaign, we surveyed 930 Americans to explore their retirement plans. Among them, 16% were retired, 22% were still working, and 62% were retirees who had returned to work."

So, 149 of those surveyed were retired. Of those 149, 25 (1 in 6) are considering returning to work. 13 of those want remote positions.

PragmaticPulp• 3 years ago

Thank you for extracting the actual numbers. Constructing underpowered surveys with loaded questions is a common tactic for pushing narratives like this. The headline confirms a lot of people’s beliefs that economic conditions are forcing people out of retirement and that remote work is the way of the future, but it really just a survey of a couple dozen people who are “considering” and “wanting” something, which ultimately has little bearing on what people actually choose to do.

These underpowered survey tactics are most frequently used in “__% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck” headlines. That’s why all of those headlines have drastically different numbers, some as high as 70-80% (which is obviously untrue). It really just means that someone was able to get a few random people on the phone to answer some questions in the middle of the day, which isn’t representative of the population at all.

tqi2• 3 years ago

I think the standard error for this survey is only like +/- 3%, which imo doesn't change the narrative THAT much. That said, without more details on the survey design, it's hard not to think issues like sampling and response bias make the results difficult to generalize...

hammock• 3 years ago

I work in quantitative research. A cell with 13 or 25 respondents in it ought to be used with caution, but is not necessarily underpowered. My "rule of thumb" is that, given a well-represented and properly weighted sample, having 30+ in a given cell when crosstabbing like this is healthy, and 10+ per cell is the bare minimum I will accept - with caution.

kdfjgbdfkjgb• 3 years ago

why is it obvious that that is untrue?

spywaregorilla2• 3 years ago

No, you just don't understand how statistics works. If you get 80% on sample of 100 people, your 95% confidence interval is +/- 8%. This assumes a random sampling method.

raisedbyninjas• 3 years ago

I think this discounts the finding that 575 people, the majority, were retirees that already returned to the workforce. This 2011 study said the rate for this was 15%. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2011/article/reentering-the-lab...

kristjansson2• 3 years ago

IMO it's less about power than the self-selection of the responders. Naive MoE estimates that assume random sampling completely miss that respondents are just a difference species, esp. w.r.t. financial attributes.

It would be shocking if some large fraction of high-earners really were living paycheck-to-paycheck. That a large fraction people who chose to respond to a survey and who stated they earn $xxxK/yr also said they're living paycheck-to-paycheck is ... somewhat less surprising.

There should be half a dozen "among survey respondents" comments to headlines like this, the same way there are a dozen "in mice" comments to every breathless report of medical progress in this-or-that.

inductive_magic• 3 years ago

...And we don't know their respective jobs.

The only indicator we get is that more than 50% of those who consider going back need money, which probably correlates negatively with jobs that have a low entry barrier for remote work.

Add to this that people above 50 tend to have serious problems getting jobs in tech (and likely adjecent industries).

bgirard2• 3 years ago

Are we using "considering" with a stronger definition? Otherwise this is meaningless.

On any given week I consider changing job, quitting, early retiring, changing teams, changing projects, etc... My brain will just rapid fire different scenarios and I'll typically conclude that staying put is my optimal move.

What's more surprising to me is that 5 in 6 are NOT considering alternate scenarios.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 3 years ago

I "consider" running away to join the circus, at least, once a day.

sokoloff• 3 years ago

I wonder why they reported 53% interested in remote (rather than 52%, which is 13/25).

asymmetric• 3 years ago

Is your point that the sample size is too small? Beyond a certain threshold, sample size doesn’t matter as much as you think.

throw_pm23• 3 years ago

That's true if the sample is random.

abledon• 3 years ago

There should be a law where you have to state this sample size stuff at the start of every statistical article.

skeeter2020• 3 years ago

25 out of almost 1000 doesn't seem like much to me. My parents are both retired and financially comfortable but would consider employment with a lot of flexibility. The 62% who had already returned to work IS surprising to me. I'd bet most of those are financially motivated

ghaff• 3 years ago

Yeah. I imagine there are (broadly speaking) two groups that are conflated. There's the group that has returned or is considering returning to full-time work because they found they need the money. And there's a group who might do something interesting on the side for a bit of money and because it's interesting.

I would absolutely consider the latter in retirement but would hope not to have to do the former.

sarchertech• 3 years ago

Seems low to me considering market performance and inflation over the last few years.

qclibre222• 3 years ago

3.227% total return, inflation adjusted from Feb 2020 to Feb 2023. Not too bad, actually. See https://dqydj.com/sp-500-return-calculator/ . Perhaps people got used to the 11.883% inflation adjusted total return from Feb 2010 to Feb 2020. Feb 1871 to Feb 2023 is 6.878% .

laidoffamazon• 3 years ago

Yeah. Market performance is fine, but people were complaining even at the peak in 2021.

kwhitefoot• 3 years ago

That title sounds as though it assumes that all the retired are white collar office workers whose jobs are amenable to remote working.

Sounds to me like the sample is not representative of the general population.

layer83• 3 years ago

That title sounds as though it assumes that all the retired are white collar office workers whose jobs are amenable to remote working.

It sounds like 1 in 6 are?

scottLobster• 3 years ago

Not surprised. Looking at the polls as to why they're considering going back the vast majority of reasons are financial (even the top voted "Personal reasons" I'd speculate is code for "I didn't plan well enough for retirement and I'm embarrassed").

As a generation, the top 50% of US baby boomer households control 98% of that generation's wealth. That leaves half of the largest generation in American history that likely doesn't have adequate retirement savings. https://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2019/10/16/the-distr...

ticviking• 3 years ago

I recently had some frank discussions with my parents, and in-laws about elder care. American society doesn't plan appropriately for this and I've seen serious tragedies in our extended family that would have been fairly easy to prepare if we had discussed them regularly.

Things like which sibling is best positioned to be caretaker, and where does the family as a whole want to live(understanding that individual members might choose to go elsewhere).

Apocryphon• 3 years ago

Wonder how many of them were part of the Great Resignation which led to the drop in labor supply in some industries previously.

For tech specifically, wonder if the mass layoffs, coupled with a tech contingent of these returning retirees, will lead to a labor glut that will make getting hired much more difficult.

JohnFen8• 3 years ago

I've been wondering the same, but my gut says it won't have a huge impact except in the narrow FAANG-style part of the industry.

I suspect that because a lot of the laid-off engineers only know that segment of the industry and will be less likely to seek work outside it for various reasons. And a lot of them will move to a different industry entirely.

hsnewman• 3 years ago

You can make stuff up with statistics. I for one am a FIRE early retiree, and have no desire to return to work regardless of remote or not. Perhaps I'm just not motivated...

zeroonetwothree• 3 years ago

I guess you are the 5 in 6 then

eachro• 3 years ago

Who said anything of their desire to return to work?

zucked• 3 years ago

I want to be a Barista FIRE - meaning, I actually enjoy talking to other humans and performing a task in exchange for money. I don't want that to dominate my personality and I don't want to NEED that job. In my later years, I hope to be lucky enough to work for fun and not to survive.

That's what I'm aiming for. Full-on retirement seems boring.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 3 years ago

I used to say "My dream is to work for free."

I'm living the dream.

I was pushed out of the workforce, five years ago (Laid off, then no one would talk to an "old").

It was scary and infuriating, but, I have since found it to be the best thing that ever happened to me. I'm very fortunate, in having the means to live (fairly humbly), and not need to work.

I love writing code, though, so that's what I do; all day, every day. I found some nonprofit stuff that engages me, and I give them a level of code that they could only dream of.

sgjohnson• 3 years ago

I’m not even expecting to ever retire. Be it for the fact that I don’t think that the economic situation is going to improve that much, or for the fact that I’d most likely die from boredom.

I’m in my mid-20s.

JustSomeNobody3• 3 years ago

I’m in my mid-20s.

Your mindset changes as you increase your years. Don't get me wrong, I love what I do. I just would rather be sitting on a bucket with a pole in the water.

twblalock• 3 years ago

When you're in your mid-50s and you get crippling arthritis or some other age-related ailment, not being able to retire is going to be a serious problem.

Quite a few people, particularly in the trades, don't get to choose when they retire -- their health dictates it.

Plan to retire, start saving now. Even if you choose to keep working in old age, having a lot of money saved up is a nice thing to have.

ajsnigrutin• 3 years ago

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    Access denied

    What happened?

    The owner of this website (www.paychex.com) has banned the country or region your IP address is in (SI) from accessing this website.

Oh joy...

qclibre222• 3 years ago

What country are connecting from?

consumer451• 3 years ago

SI is Slovenia, also not working from a Czech IP, but does work from Germany and Poland. Interesting.

rcme2• 3 years ago

My mom retired and then returned to work a year later. To me, not working is amazing. I love it. I was laid off and would love to continue not working (if only I could afford it!). My mom, however, felt differently. She explained it like this: she knows she is getting older, so, after retiring, she felt as if she was just waiting around for death. Yes, she had more time for activities she enjoyed, but she also enjoyed working. She enjoyed being a productive member of society. She enjoyed being relevant. I understand where she's coming from, even though I disagree.

giantg2• 3 years ago

"she felt as if she was just waiting around for death."

That's how I feel at work.

granshaw3• 3 years ago

Amen, but rephrased as "I'm throwing away my good years till death"

rcme2• 3 years ago

Maybe this feeling is part of the human condition, regardless of age.

nickpeterson• 3 years ago

I think the balance is, if the job is still doable at retirement ages, and isn’t some physically grueling task, having seniors put in 3-4 day weeks might be a good option. Especially if they do t have hobbies or others to care for.

klyrs• 3 years ago

It took my mom a few years to find her rhythm, but she's loving retirement. Crucially, it took her some time to find community that she could meaningfully participate in, but now that she's got that, she doesn't look back.

UncleOxidant2• 3 years ago

I did a trial run at retirement for a couple of years (2020-2021). And I think I came to a similar conclusion as your mom. I figured I'd learn stuff, work on projects, etc. and I certainly did some of that, but there were just too many choices to make for how to spend my time and at some point that causes a sort of paralysis of inaction. You figure you've got plenty of time to do X so might as well do it tomorrow - lots of procrastination. At some point I figured I might as well go back to work and get paid to do something.

I think my ideal would be to work something like 3 days/week - I could just do that forever if the work was moderately interesting, but there aren't a lot of programming gigs where they let you do that.

granshaw3• 3 years ago

Why not just freelance and pick gigs you find interesting?

When client asks why you can only do 3days/week, "I would love to, but my other clients..."

chihuahua• 3 years ago

I've had a lot of different jobs over the past 25 years. All of them in software, some FAANG, some smaller companies. I've hated every day of every one of those jobs. Right now, not working sounds like the greatest thing in the world to me. But I wonder what it's going to be like when I don't have to deal with this shit any more.

JohnFen8• 3 years ago

Yes, she had more time for activities she enjoyed, but she also enjoyed working.

My issue is that I believed in the saying "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life". It turned out that doing what I love as a career sucks much of the joy out of what I love.

So there's a part of me that's looking forward to retirement precisely so that I can get back to programming for real, rather than for pay.

But I'm also well aware that this thinking may be yet another trap.

0xGod2• 3 years ago

Open up more management positions. Assign one manager to one individual contributor. The manager's job is to be that individual contributor's friend and ally and mentor. The manager will be evaluated on how many of the IC's parameters get boosted over time, in all areas of life that the IC is open to receiving management and training and mentorship on.

layer83• 3 years ago

Make it a secretary instead of a manager, and I might consider it. :)

0xGod2• 3 years ago

It'll sell better if you use the modern vernacular, but certainly.

exabrial• 3 years ago

53% that want remote positions need to realize that there’s someone in another country willing to do the remote job remotely for 1/6th of the wage.

My experience as of late is remote workers in India have advanced their language and professional skills greatly in the last 5-10 years.

Be careful what you wish for.

voxl• 3 years ago

If this where true then the labor would be gobbled up by the market regardless of how the labor in the U.S. feels. So the obvious question is, if you're so worried about it, why isn't it already happening?

ChuckNorris896• 3 years ago

It's happening very slowly but it's happening. In my Eastern European country tech wages shot up immensely after the Covid WFH boom thanks to American companies hiring here a lot.

In the US 80k+ is a bottom junior wage but here it's a king's ransom considering the lower taxes and lower CoL, so there's talented seniors willing to grind long hours and work on US timezones for that kind of cheese. I assume it's similar in Latin-AM and Asia.

So far it probably hasn't noticeably impacted US wages as there was an endless stream of free money pouring from the sky which enabled tech companies to keep hiring mostly US talent and grow much faster than off-shore talent onboarding could reliably be done, but now that the negative rate money printing bonanza is over, and the companies figured out how to better work fully remote and how to screen for quality off-shore talent, US companies without the massive war-chests that FAANGs have might focus more on talent from abroad to stay profitable.

Just my 0.02$

rtp4me3• 3 years ago

It already has happened. In the big tech companies I worked for, adding new headcount always seemed to come from outside the US. Even today, many of the senior leaders come from India. Not to mention the people with Visas.

ChuckNorris896• 3 years ago

Your view is far too tech centric. People old enough to be retirees are unlikely to work in tech/SW development but more stuff like law, medicine or traditional engineering where local credentials matter and act as gate keeping, so it's highly unlikely they'll face competition from abroad.

Mostly tech workers are at risk from remote work negatively impacting their wages.

throwaway59596• 3 years ago

They’re only too old due to age discrimination. I’ve worked with a number of excellent 50+ y/o workers in tech.

JohnFen8• 3 years ago

People old enough to be retirees are unlikely to work in tech/SW development

What? There are tons of software engineers at or beyond retirement age. The industry isn't /that/ young.

rtp4me3• 3 years ago

Agree 100%. 20yrs ago I worked with multiple teams from India, and we always seemed to have language, skill, and expectation gaps ("the work is done" did not always mean it was done). Now, the India teams are very skilled, speak good/great English, and the expectation gaps are much closer.

As you said, "be careful what you wish for"...

JohnFen8• 3 years ago

A decade ago, I worked on a team that was half in India and half local to me (in the US). There was no problem with skills, language, etc. at all.

But the time difference was a constant and pretty large issue. If you wanted to have a live meeting, it meant that someone was going to have to be working at a problematic hour.

throwaway59596• 3 years ago

Almost all software engineering jobs can be done remotely. If the only thing you have to offer is proximity, you’re probably not going to be in a good position.

Spivak• 3 years ago

Yeah, this sounds great. Everyone in the world getting access to the tech industry without having to be gatekept by living in a few tech-hubs in the US.

I think at some point we have to turn off the "but any advancement at all will be bad for me because post capitalist hellscape" voice as that's true of everything.

rocknor3• 3 years ago

Despite continuous cries of "capitalism bad" these days it continues to uplift people all around the world by offering skilled people a fairer chance to compete, while also promoting long lasting world peace. We need more of it, not less.

symlinkk• 3 years ago

It uplifts people across the globe while hurting your fellow citizens. We need less of it, not more.

babyshake• 3 years ago

Remote workers in India isn't the only inexpensive workforce that has improved language skills recently...

danuker2• 3 years ago

Indeed. Computers as well. And the workers in India could leverage them to further close the skill gap.

unity1001• 3 years ago

Its a good thing to wish for: This way, the US labor can also become free to disperse to regions with more sane cost of living and work for similar wages.

Similar wages, because the overseas senior talent wont work for anyone's corp for dimes, in contrast to what some seem to think. They have their own career trajectories, their expectations. If you don't pay them more than what the local corps pay, you wont get them because those local corps come with a lot of perks and the social status. The latter can be quite more important in many regions of the world in respect to the expectations of your family, relatives and friends so the pay difference must be worth losing it.

rocknor3• 3 years ago

Yeah, people who think jobs being shipped to other countries is bad should realise that in the long run this increases their own mobility. The quality of life gap between the US and these countries decreases, because higher per-capita income makes everything better. This leads to fewer visa restrictions between those countries. Believe me, India's geographical diversity and cultural openness makes it an amazing place to live provided it fixes its pressing issues and increases its HDI.

Tangentially, this shows why moving jobs to countries with similar values of democracy/pluralism/diversity (e.g. India) is better than authoritarian states, as the latter does not really improve the mobility of your citizens.

commandlinefan3• 3 years ago

have advanced their language and professional skills

They haven't made much progress in advancing their time zone difference, though.

Zetice• 3 years ago

Any foreign worker that's as good as a "native" worker will also successfully find a job paying within 10% of what the "native" worker would be paid.

Once you get into the lower cost workers, and that's why quality dips.

dukeofdoom2• 3 years ago

I was shocked how expensive it is to vacation in Florida now. $300 hotel rooms, $100 car rentals.

What's better for the economy, a retiree boomer working as a walmart greater, or one that spends their savings in Florida.

Not sure how many can afford that without having to Maid themselves at the end of the vacation, the way they do in Canada.

I suspect people are going back to work, because they can't afford much of a retirement.

barbazoo2• 3 years ago

Not sure how many can afford that without having to Maid themselves at the end of the vacation, the way they do in Canada.

I'm assuming you mean MAID as in "Medical assistance in dying". You should do some research as it's a very serious thing and obviously not used to end one's life after an expensive vacation. Pretty gross to make fun of people that consider MAID. Do better!

https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/medical-assi...

dukeofdoom2• 3 years ago

It's a lot of different things for different people. For some people its a way to get organs. For others it's to escape poverty.

https://toronto.citynews.ca/2022/10/13/medical-assistance-de...

It's been offered to people depressed and Vetrans, and now is getting pushed to young people.

The gross part is that it's been pushed as a way for government to save money. IF you don't think thats the over riding incentive you haven't been paying attention.

chmod775• 3 years ago

What's better for the economy, a retiree boomer working as a walmart greater, or one that spends their savings in Florida.

The economy serves the people. That is its purpose: to make everyone's life better.

To do that the economy needs to actually produce and provide something. People not doing any actual work and instead just competing for limited economic output is not helpful.

So yeah: Boomers actually working would be better for everyone. Them just spending money and merely competing for resources is detrimental to everyone else.

vintermann• 3 years ago

I'm not worried about competition from returning retirees. I'm "considering" learning another foreign language too. There are a lot of things I consider but end up ultimately not doing, on account of the fact that they take a lot of effort and I don't really have to do them. I don't expect that to change when I'm retired, sadly.

Frankly I'm surprised only 1/6 retirees are considering returning to work. Maybe we all get more realistic with age.

binarymax• 3 years ago

“ But the biggest reason to not hire a retiree is cultural, say 71% of hiring managers. Can these candidates integrate into the current company culture? This concern is followed by uncertainty about their knowledge of industry trends (67%) and whether they still have the skills needed for the job (59%).”

Ageism stated plainly and bluntly.

JustSomeNobody3• 3 years ago

This is sad.

Politicians want to keep people in the workforce longer by threatening to raise retirement age, but corporate America doesn't want them.

skee8383• 3 years ago

If they hate retirement so much their assets should be seized and given to the younger generations that actually need it.

olddustytrail• 3 years ago

You mean the assets of the people who have contributed most to society should be given to the people who have contributed the least?

An interesting idea but it doesn't scale.

AlbertCory• 3 years ago

I was going to say "clickbait" but "1 in 6 are considering" is not even very good bait.

I just emailed with a retired (or rather, un-retired) guy who's an expert in Agile & other methodologies, and he said, paraphrasing, "I walk around and people talk to me, and then they send me a check. It's a good gig."

JustSomeNobody3• 3 years ago

5 of 11 of the reasons are related to money and health.

What a "shithole" country.

danuker2• 3 years ago

Funny that after waves of layoffs since we're no longer under ZIRP, the applicant pool gets even larger. This should further lower the pay.

Uptrenda• 3 years ago

Why are you considering returning to work
Feeling lonely 43%

Damn... Right in the feels. That's sad.

birdyrooster• 3 years ago

So all the crypto bros that retired at 25 now have to re enter the workplace and they want to do it remotely.

Vosporos• 3 years ago

your country has fucked up big time

cheriot• 3 years ago

It's hard to read into this without knowing what responses were in the past (especially the recent years pre-pandemic).

1 in 6 retirees are considering returning to work, and 53% want remote positions

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