For Many Boomers, Work is the New Retirement

Transamerica's Center for Retirement Studies recently released the results from their 17th annual U.S. retirement survey. 

As with prior years, it's full of interesting data on the retirement preparations and plans of Americans of all ages. 

Most interesting to us is their section on Baby Boomers. This group is currently entering retirement age in large numbers (roughly 10,000 turn 65 every day) and the oldest members turn 70 this year.

Because of this, Baby Boomers are providing insights on how retirement is changing.

The big change is around work. More specifically the fact that more Americans are choosing to work past the age of 65.

This, of course, is not new news.

We cover this topic extensively in our baby boomer section and have even gone as far as saying we're tired of it (we are). 

But it's an important societal issue and one of the drivers of the growth of independent workers, so we'll continue to cover it.

The data from the Transamerica study on Baby Boomers is in the study chart below (click to enlarge). 

To us the key data point is that two thirds of baby boomers plan to or already are working past the age of 65.

This explains why a record number of Americans aged 65 and older are still in the workforce. It also explains why we are forecasting that growing numbers of aging boomers will become independent workers and small business owners (again, see our baby boomer section for more on this). 

Related to this, the JP Morgan Chase Institute study Past 65 and Still Working: Big Data Insights on Senior Citizens’ Financial Lives shows that about 400,000 Americans over the age of 65 are working via online platform companies like Uber and Airbnb. 

This echos the Intuit On-Demand Economy study, which found 25% of those working via online platform companies are aged 52 or older. A big appeal of these platforms is they provide a very easy and flexible way to work part-time, something older workers value highly. 

It's quite clear at this point growing numbers of older Americans are going to stay in the workforce. It's also clear that many of these older Americans will choose independent work.