As she nears retirement age, 58-year-old Michelle Whiffen isn’t thinking about stopping work cold turkey. The director of client services at recruitment marketing firm HireClix says she’s reached the fun part of her career—a time when she feels more autonomous and valued—and appreciates a new program called “flextirement” that will let her work fewer hours while keeping her health benefits. “My age is just a number,” she says. “I can’t imagine walking out the door tomorrow.”

Though some Gen Xers are nearing retirement age and all Baby Boomers will do so before 2030, more and more are continuing to work well into their golden years. That’s the finding of a new report released Thursday by Pew Research Center, which shows that one in five Americans (19%) age 65 and older were employed this year, nearly double the percentage who were working in 1987.

Perhaps most startling: Workers age 75 and older are the fastest-growing group in the workforce, according to Pew’s analysis.

“It’s not just that we’ve got more older adults today; it’s that more of them are working than they used to,” says Richard Fry, a senior researcher at Pew Research Center and co-author of Thursday's report.

Expanded employer benefits, such as perks aimed at older workers or phased retirement programs like the one at HireClix, are one reason more employees are working longer, experts say. Phased retirement programs let older workers cut back on their hours while still receiving some pay and benefits; about 36% of companies surveyed by human resources consulting firm Mercer in 2022 said they now offer them. Others are introducing perks like paid grandparent leave, which tech giant Cisco offers, or menopause perks such as access to women's health specialists at companies like Microsoft.

Other major drivers behind the boom in older employees include that workers are healthier and less likely to have a disability, and face increasingly steeper financial challenges. Inflation, changes in pension systems and “less generous” Social Security benefits, Fry says, have workers feeling obligated to work longer.

Stephen Miggels, who at 72 is still working 10 to 20 hours a week as a medical product developer, says “there’s this widespread fear of running out of money in our later years because we’re all getting older and living longer. How long can your retirement funds haul out? That’s one of my main motivations to keep working.”

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