New Evidence That Retirement is a Thing of the Past (Forbes)

A new study conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of the jobs site CareerBuilder.com. reinforces a trend that has been building over the past several years: retirement no longer starts at age 65. In fact, retirement in the traditional sense may no longer exist at all. Most (57%) of the 800 surveyed workers age 60 and up said they would look for another gig after retiring from their current jobs. So they would only semi-retire. When workers were asked how soon they thought they could retire from their current jobs, 11% said they didn’t think they’d ever be able to stop working. About a quarter (26%) expected to be able to retire in 1 to 2 years, while 23% said it would take 3 to 4 years. Four percent anticipated it would be more than 10 years before they could leave the workforce. Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder, said she’s seeing more people move away from the traditional definition of retirement and instead seek “rehirement.” She says, “More than half of people currently age 60-plus will have to continue working in some capacity for years after their official retirement, and one in 10 don’t think they’ll ever be able to retire.”