And what to do about it now and next time
Part 2: Older Americans need jobs.
Multiple factors have forced millions of over-60 Americans to need full-time work or live in penury (or both, given the wages of the jobs they can land).
"While some older Americans may elect to continue working for financial or social reasons, others may have little choice but to work in low-paid and challenging jobs without a clear path to retirement. The labor market environment that has shaped their working lives was characterized by a decline in unionization, an erosion of the real value of the minimum wage, and a shift in responsibility from employers to workers for health care and retirement." -- "Older Workers and Retirement Security: a Review," Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA), 2023.
Many Americans have always had to continue working after the so-called "retirement age" because they have little to no retirement savings.
According to a Pew Research report citing data from the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP):