How long will baby boomers keep working? For some, the answer is forever.

To grossly paraphrase Kim Kardashian, nobody stops working anymore. Just look at who’s in the running for the top job in the nation: a 77-year-old against an 81-year-old, both vying to keep working for another four years. Yet they’re in lockstep with a national trend — older Americans are working longer, into their 60s and even their 70s and beyond. Among Americans 65 and older, 19 percent were still working last year, which is almost a twofold increase from the late 1980s.

Last year, the average retirement age was 62, according to a Gallup survey, up from 59 in the early 2000s. Older people aren’t just delaying retirement, but working longer hours: On average, this group’s annual work hours are almost 30 percent higher than they were in 1987.

The question of why is hard to answer. People keep working because they want to and because they have to, and sometimes a mix of both. “You can think of it as both a reflection of empowered preferences to go work more and longer — versus curtailed savings that force you into the labor force. They’re both happening,” says economist Kathryn Edwards.

  • boogetyboo
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    4 months ago

    Does your family have to approve of your employment for you to deem it a decent job? My parents don’t get this new fangled technology nonsense that I work with. It’s just a passing phase in their minds. So is my work indecent?

    Does the difficulty of a job make it decent? Does one need to suffer for their wage? Does the ease of a task make it less decent to you?

    Which society are you referring to? The USA’s? Finland’s? Botswana’s?

    • Politically Incorrect@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I believe a decent job it’s a socially acceptable job which doesn’t harm any big or small cell of the society (your country as the biggest and yourself as the smallest-your children beyond yourself-), easy money jobs are seen like indencent jobs for the society too, like drug dealing, pimping(exploiting), prostitution(digital or physical), I believe the difference between a decent job and an indecent job will be determined by the laws of you local jurisdiction or maybe the rules of you community if you live into a religious community.

      And as the internet it’s very hard to regulate, then you will definitely have a lot of jurisdiction contradictions involved.

      I usually don’t care about people selling nudes on the internet, but I definitely not define it as “hard working” or “entrepreneurship”. I see it more like an easy money job ergo an indencent job.