Avoid These Jobs if You Want to Be Working After Retirement

You have heard it before: “Work in Retirement!”

If you want to be financially secure, working after retirement age or working as long as possible before retirement is a good idea.

Think about it, if you retire at age 65 (or before), you might be spending 30 years not working. Thirty years is a long time and requires significant savings or a very low monthly spend.

Beyond the financial benefits, work after retirement keeps you vital by improving your mental and physical well being.

However, it is probably no surprise that it is easier to work in some jobs than others.

Researchers at the RAND Center for the Study of Aging studied the impact of various careers on the timing of retirement. Their findings were published in the paper, The Effects of Job Characteristics on Retirement.

Jobs Where People Stop Working After Retirement Age

According to the study, the jobs where people retire the earliest include:

• Shipping and receiving clerks
• Other mechanics and repairers
• Precision metal working occupations (welders)
• Farm occupations (non managerial)
• Other machine operators
• Production inspectors, testers, samplers, and weighers
• Construction equipment operators
• Other freight, stock, and material handlers

The researchers did not determine exactly why people in these careers retire early, but hypotheses include:

• The physicality of many of these jobs made the work too difficult for older people.
• Many of these jobs are unionized which often means that they come with a pension and stronger early retirement incentives.

Jobs Where People of Retirement Age and Older Keep Working

• Managers of medicine and health occupations
• Other financial specialists
• Management analysts
• Lawyers and judges
• Health technologists and technicians
• Customer service representatives, investigators, and adjusters (except insurance)
• Teacher assistants
• Farm operators and managers
• Gardeners and groundskeepers
• Taxi cab drivers and chauffeurs

Why are these desirable jobs?

• Some of these require less physical effort and less stress.
• Other jobs are suitable to reduced or flexible hours.

White-collar jobs, especially creative or labor-of-love jobs like architects, lawyers and the clergy, as well as jobs that are not physically demanding commonly are the jobs where people work well into their 70s. Research also showed occupations like taxi drivers and chauffeurs, guards and watchmen were held by people working past age 66.

These jobs also provide flexible hours, which many older workers find appealing and opportunities for social engagement, which appears to be especially important for well-being at older ages.

Transitioning to Retirement

If you like the job you have before retirement, you might not retire. But, maybe you don’t like your job or you want more flexibility but you still want the financial and emotional benefits of work.

More and more seniors are finding work that they enjoy as second careers, either part-time or full-time. Sometimes, these jobs pay less than previous employment, sometimes more.

Do You Need to Be Working After Retirement?

A good way to figure out if you should be working or not is to use the Boldin retirement calculator. This powerful tool puts you in charge of a wide range of retirement factors. What happens if you quit now and never work again? Make a change and instantly find out how your finances change if you work part-time at the golf course.

Recently named a best retirement calculator by the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII), this calculator is easy to use but really sophisticated and kind of fun.

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