Older women are changing the face of the U.S. labor force

More women than ever are putting off retirement, and they do it because they relish their work — or because they have no choice, especially in recent years.

For decades, family duties and discrimination pushed women out of the workforce earlier than men, but today’s older women are staying on the job longer than previous generations. Some seek career satisfaction, but others work longer because they feel they can’t afford to retire.

“We’re seeing a little bit of a duality now where some women are absolutely not wanting to leave the workforce because it’s so empowering to be there and stay there as long as they can,” said Ashir Coillberg, a senior research analyst at the National Women’s Law Center. “And some women can’t leave the workforce because of all of those factors with unequal pay, low wages, workplace discrimination, and everything else that went into delaying their ability to work and then hampering their ability to save.”

The labor force participation rate for women older than 55 was 33.6% in 2023, a more than seven percentage point increase from 2000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That jump is even more pronounced for women in their 60s and 70s. More than 10% of U.S. workers as of 2021 were women 55 or older, according to the Labor Department.

Multiple studies from the past decade have shown that many women work longer because they genuinely want to.

Tech industry veteran Lexy Martin entered the workforce in the 1960s and tried retiring a decade ago when she left her job to care for her husband. Martin returned to work after his recovery, and she has no plans to stop.

“It wasn’t a money thing that drove me back to work, but that I’ve always wanted to be of value in some way,” said Martin, 80. “For me, it was about passion.”

Martin is among the first generation of U.S. women to spend their prime working years — ages 25 to 54 — juggling some level of financial independence with family responsibilities. Now they’re often the most educated and qualified candidates for the roles they pursue, said Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter. Over the past 50 years, women have significantly boosted their educational attainment and risen into leadership roles at work — key factors that contribute to their career satisfaction and longevity, Pollak said.

A 2018 Harvard University study found that older women workers were more likely to have invested in their education and career earlier in life, and often had more savings. It also found that 85% to 90% of employed women aged 59 to 63 enjoyed their work six to eight years earlier, indicating that job satisfaction factors heavily into the desire to delay retirement.

Stefania Albanesi, an economics professor at the University of Miami, suspects that recent growth in the number of older women workers is driven by those in professional occupations with college degrees.

Earnings for college-educated women tend to peak later in life than men because women often spend years away from the labor force to care for children, Albanesi said. The earnings trajectory for women after college is also less steep compared with men, so it takes longer for them to earn the same amount in their careers, she added. The gender pay gap for college graduates peaks between the ages of 50 and 54, according to a 2018 report from Georgetown University researchers.

“When you get to the peak, you have accumulated less wealth, and that would give you an extra incentive to continue working,” Albanesi said. “If you reach your peak, you also probably want to stay there for a bit.”

Author and writing coach Beth Barany, 56, started her own company 18 years ago after taking her 20s and 30s to settle into her career. The Oakland, Calif., resident earns enough to support herself, but her retirement savings are limited. She plans to sell the condo she shares with her husband to fund a move to a retirement community in about 25 years, but she can’t imagine stepping back anytime soon.

“I have a tremendous amount of satisfaction having done what I’ve done, and I also feel like there’s so much more to do,” she said. “Why would I want to leave? It’s like I’m finally fluent.”

Female-dominated sectors, especially health care, are some of the fastest growing industries in the U.S. labor force, Pollak said. That creates a “snowball effect” when paired with women’s advancement into male-dominated industries such as computer science and engineering. Many career setbacks tied to motherhood have also diminished in the last half-century as women start families later, Pollak said.

Pamela Corsentino, 58, took about a decade off work during her prime earning years to raise two children. Her husband’s military schedule kept him from helping with childcare, and she determined that day care costs would swallow up any paycheck she received from a full-time job. As her kids grew up and she returned to work, Corsentino prioritized short-term gigs that allowed her to stay present with her family.

But her divorce shifted her thinking. The Buford, Ga., resident could no longer rely on the financial plan she laid out with her husband, and at 47, Corsentino went back to school to build her career. Now she works remotely in her psychotherapy practice and doesn’t plan to retire.

“No matter how old I get, I’m not going to age out of my career,” she said. “A woman in her 50s does not have kids at home, is not going to get pregnant, has more time to devote to a career, has more experience, and overall is probably going to cost you a lot less because they’re going to stick around.”

Despite the surge in remote work opportunities for those in professional roles, the pandemic intensified the financial challenges many older women encounter. The unemployment rate for women older than 55 spiked to more than 15% in April 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and took two years to settle to pre-pandemic levels. Older unemployed women are likely to be without work longer in downturns and often take a significant pay cut when they land a new job, experts say.

The U.S. population is aging rapidly, and more people will turn 65 this year than ever before, according to a report from the Alliance for Lifetime Income, an educational nonprofit. Most of those older Americans are working longer, experts say, because many employers have shifted from offering defined benefit pension plans, which encourage workers to retire right when they’re eligible, to 401(k) plans, which incentivize workers to stay in their roles. The government also raised the floor for collecting full Social Security benefits in the 1980s from 65 to 67, which has had a measurable impact on retirement planning, experts say.

But gender inequality plays an outsize role in motivating older women to work longer, experts say. In 2024, women made 84 cents for every dollar men made, and this gap is even more stark for Black and Hispanic women, according to the Labor Department.

Women live longer than men but end up saving far less in their lifetimes, said Debra Whitman, chief public policy officer at AARP. Annual Social Security income for women 65 and older is, on average, about $4,000 lower than their male counterparts, according to the Social Security Administration. The average woman’s 401(k) account balance is about half the size of the average man’s, according to a 2023 Bank of America analysis.

“A lot of [women] don’t realize how little Social Security and their pensions and their retirement savings really stretch compared to their bills,” Whitman said. “People really need the money, and working longer delays the need to tap into those retirement funds, and every year you work, your Social Security check goes up. I think that financial needs are really driving this.”

About 43% of women surveyed in 2021 by AARP were caring for an adult family member, friend, child, or grandchild during the pandemic. Labor Department data indicates up to 13% of women ages 55 and older who left the workforce during the first year of the pandemic did so to provide care.

While many have returned to work, older women have had a harder time bouncing back because of gendered age discrimination and caretaking responsibilities.

In 2015, Eileen Kilgore left her job as a human resources manager in Louisiana to help her father, who was diagnosed with dementia. After grieving his death in 2021, she started the hunt for a new job knowing there were “two big strikes” against her: She was about to turn 60 and had a yearslong employment gap.

It took Kilgore more than a year and dozens of applications to land a new job as a human resources manager in June 2022.

“I know that I still have the skills,” she said. “I don’t want to just be home all day.”