‘Happier in my career than I’ve ever been’: Why more seniors are ‘unretiring’

Stacie Haller, a consultant for executives, recently had a meeting with a former business owner in his early 80s. He’d sold his business, started playing golf, and discovered something about himself: he found golf extremely boring.

And now, even though he doesn’t need to be, he’s back on the job market. 

“’I’m so vital’,” he’d told Haller, “’I’m still in the game’.”

Haller is a senior herself. She says could have stuck with retirement after getting furloughed from her recruiting job during the pandemic. Instead, she started independently consulting for senior executives and for Resume Builder. Now? She’s working part-time and earning as much as she did before. 

“I’m happier now in my career than I’ve ever been,” she says. 

According to recent survey of more than 3,500 U.S. seniors by Resume Builder, around one in eight have returned to work as of December 2025, or are planning to do so. Another 16% have never retired, and 4% were actively applying for jobs. 

Another survey, by financial advice company The Motley Fool from October 2025, found that 54% of 2,000 Americans who get Social Security benefits “have returned to work or considered going back” because Social Security benefits are so low.

But, as in the case of Haller’s former business owner, that’s not the only factor driving what some call “unretirement.”

“The number-one answer is usually related to money, but it’s not the clear winner,” says Robert Brokamp, senior retirement adviser at The Motley Fool. “There are many people who do go back to work because they got bored. They got lonely. They needed something to do.” 

“When you are older, you actually have an opportunity to try something new—or not have as much stress with your job,” says Haller.

While these reasons keeping seniors working may have applied in the past, they’re arguably driving more of a trend now because of how work has changed since the pandemic: Flexible, hybrid, and remote work opportunities make it much easier for seniors, who may have health or mobility issues, to remain in the workforce. 

Rising costs of living

Brokamp says that there’s “no question” that people in their 60s through 80s are returning or continuing to work at increasing rates. With people living well into their 90s, they’ve got a lot more time to budget for, especially in today’s economy. 

In Resume Builder’s survey, 54% of respondents attributed continuing or returning to work after an initial retirement to the high cost of living. “I don’t know a person that doesn’t go to the supermarket and walk out and say, ‘Are you kidding me?’” Haller says.

Such everyday costs also amplify concerns seniors have about Social Security and Medicare, which 26% and 19% in that survey, respectively, cited as their reasons for working. Though Social Security did undergo a recent 2.8% cost of living adjustment increase, 54% of recipients told The Motley Fool that wasn’t high enough. With inflation at 2.7%, that increase might seem like enough—but the problem, says Brokamp, is that inflation often plays out differently for working professionals than retirees. 

“The inflation rate for healthcare is over 3%,” he says—a major cost for seniors, who not only may visit doctors more regularly, but also tend to spend more on prescription medications than their younger counterparts.

Other financial factors that drive seniors to return to work include not having saved enough for retirement, having to pay off debt (medical or otherwise), and needing to support their children, per Resume Builder.

This picture, of course, looks different across different wealth brackets. Geoffrey Sanzenbacher, a research fellow at Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research, has found that people who’ve earned less income during their careers, and therefore don’t have as much “emergency savings,” can get “drawn back into the labor market” with a single “health shock” to them or a family member.

Unlike other surveys, Sanzenbacher’s research points to a low unretirement rate of 1.9%, which he says comes from looking at narrower timelines (as in, seniors working at the time of the survey, not within that year).  

“Right now, you have a perfect storm of reasons why the unretirement rate might be low,” Sanzenbacher says. That includes a not-great job market (more people “unretire” in good job markets because they have more opportunities, he says) and a high stock market. So, retirees relying on 401Ks, for example, should be well in the black.

This, to him, suggests that people unretiring now must be doing it because they really need the cash.

Continued vitality, personal fulfillment

If seniors are reentering the workforce by choice post-retirement, they’re likely doing it to have some fun—and are perhaps more likely to be doing more independent work, like starting their own businesses, which doesn’t rely on getting hired.

Haller mentions seniors who’ve emerged from retirement to start their own Etsy shops, and Sanzenbacher brings up the idea of a retired worker who’s always wanted to be a tour guide finally fulfilling that dream. The desire to return to work to try something new, says Sanzenbacher, “is very common among higher income or more educated workers.” Typically, he adds, those post-career jobs relate to the former retiree’s original career.

“They were a lawyer, and now they’re an arbitration judge who works one day a week on Zoom,” suggests Sanzenbacher, “or they were a teacher, and now they’re a tour guide.” Sometimes, these reentries are part of long-term plans. Other times, says Sanzenbacher, “it can be [from] the realization that retirement isn’t as fun as what people thought.”

“The evidence on whether retirement is good for us is very mixed, and it really depends on what you’re retiring from and what you’re retiring to,” says Brokamp. “Many people have boring, stressful, arduous jobs, and retirement is very good for them. On the other hand, many people had decent jobs that they actually somewhat enjoyed, and when they retire, they feel adrift.”

This rings true for a lot of the seniors Haller speaks with about unretirement. After “enjoying work,” at 54%, Resume Builder survey respondents described non-financial factors like “combatting boredom” and “to socialize” as significant reasons to keep working or go back to work after retirement. 

Mark Brodsky, 72, director of Field Associate Learning at Lowe’s, has barely even conceived of retirement, though people often ask him when he’s going to do it. “Usually, without missing a beat, I say, ‘The day I have no further value to provide and or my value is not needed or wanted.’” This could mean never retiring. 

“Did Picasso stop painting?” he asks. “I spent 50 years developing my craft . . . Why should I put that on the shelf?”

Flexible work, more options

Haller, for one, says she can work as much as she does because working remotely, or in hybrid positions, has become such a norm. “Our bodies age,” says Haller. “Honestly, I’m not getting on a commuter train for two hours a day anymore.”

The flexibility that often comes with remote or part-time work fits with what most seniors returning to work from retirement are looking for, anyway. “I don’t know any 70- or 75-year-old who really wants that high-pressured, C-suite job if they’re going back to work,” Haller says, and they should make this clear to employers if they’re looking for the kind of work that requires getting hired (instead of working independently like Haller). 

Haller suggests seniors tell hiring managers that they’re looking for more relaxed positions than in their previous careers. Otherwise, hiring might assume seniors are looking for the same, high salaries they retired with, and not want to spend that much money on an employee who’s likely not going to remain in the workforce for very long.

“We have to overcome that objection,” Haller says, by making it explicit to employers that salaries commensurate with past full-time jobs aren’t what “unretirees” are requesting. Make that known in cover letters or networking conversations, Haller suggests, and emphasize the pros you’ll bring to the office even if you’re not necessarily in it for as long as younger workers. 

Seniors coming out of retirement have probably “seen every situation in the workforce already,” Haller says, and can keep a cool head encountering problems while valuably mentoring younger colleagues. 

Brodsky calls this “scar tissue”: “Life provides you bumps and bruises, and scar tissue is actually an attribute . . . If I were hiring a senior executive for important work, I’d want to bring on somebody who had scar tissue.”

Regardless of the reasons for returning to work, the overall message is clear. 

“We don’t go off into pasture when we turn 65 anymore,” Haller says. “We have choices now.”