Over one-fifth of Americans over 65 are still working

More than a fifth of American seniors are working in retirement age, with some states showing greater-than-average rates of over-65s still in the workforce, according to a recent analysis of federal data by LendingTree.

According to LendingTree’s analysis of data from the US Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, 22 percent of Americans aged 65 and older were in the workforce as of March 2024, with a significant portion opting for self-employment.

The participation of older adults in the workforce has seen a slight decline over the past two years, LendingTree noted, dropping marginally from 22.5 percent in March 2022.

“The dip between 2022 and 2024 could be related to employment trends during and after the COVID-19 pandemic,” LendingTree chief credit analyst Matt Schulz said in LendingTree’s report. “Many older adults departed the workforce in what was coined the Great Retirement and rejoined it in what has been called the Great Unretirement.”

While it shows a near-term decline in senior employment, the latest snapshot data point on older Americans is more than double the rate in 1987, when 11 percent of retirement-age adults were employed based on data from The Pew Research Center.

LendingTree also hinted at considerable differences in working preferences between seniors and younger generations. Nearly one in four of workers aged 65 and up (24.2 percent) were self-employed, compared to only 8.1 percent of workers aged 25 to 39. The analysis also indicates that 50.5 percent of older workers are employed by private companies, while 10.3 percent work for the government.

Looking at state-level data, the analysis found the largest increase in senior workers in New Jersey: the state saw a 66.5 percent rise in the number of working adults aged 65 and older, growing from 20.3 percent in March 2022 to 33.8 percent in March 2024. Delaware and Indiana also saw significant increases, with rises of 37.4 percent and 32.2 percent, respectively.

“These increases could be a concerning sign that more and more older Americans are finding themselves needing extra income in their so-called golden years,” Schulz said. “Inflation could be taking a major toll on the assumptions that these people made about what they’d need to get by in retirement.”