After more than a decade in retirement, Gregory Boulware went back to work in 2020.
Boulware, 69, was a truck driver for about 30 years, spending long hours on the road, away from his Pennsylvania home and his wife and kids, to make a living and put away some savings. His body started to suffer the consequences of years on the road, and he began to worry that the continuous back pain and aches would worsen. So he went back to school and got his associate’s degree in management and information technology in 2007 but could only find temporary work. He retired in 2008.
In retirement, he started writing books, “which make no money,” he said with a laugh, but he had retirement savings, started collecting Social Security at 59, and had a plan. But then he and his wife bought a house.
“When we lived in an apartment, we were doing fine because we could easily afford it, but every year the rent would go up,” Boulware said. “I woke up one day and said, ‘You know, these people can tell us to leave, and the next hour, we would have nowhere to go.'”
The house bought with their life’s savings led to fear of losing the house, every mortgage payment a challenge, sometimes pulling from other expenses such as food and gas to make ends meet. Boulware decided he needed to go back to work. He enrolled in a job training program for low-income adults through the Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP), a community service and work based training program for older workers authorized by the Older Americans Act, and was hired last month into a clerical job.
“Retirement doesn’t mean what it used to,” said Nora Dowd Eisenhower, executive director at the Philadelphia Mayor’s Commission on Aging.
Higher rent, higher food prices and longer lifespans often lead to financial challenges for many Americans, leading to post-retirement job searches. More people have returned to work after retirement, with a steady uptick happening over the last few months.
This is continuing the trend of older people considering retirement a temporary stage, lasting until a financial need arises, according to Emma Aguila, an economist and associate professor at the University of Southern California Sol Price School of Public Policy.
In October, the unretirement rate was 2.6 percent, above the 2.5 percent rate for September and 2.4 percent in August, a steady upward trajectory, according to an analysis of data from the Current Population Survey (a household survey from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics) by Nick Bunker, economic research director for North America at the job site Indeed.
Bunker said that his analysis does not look into the reasons for the increase and that survey data showed that pandemic job loss and a more viable job market might be a factor. But other experts said the uptick, driven partly…