Springfield’s workforce is getting older as many boomers refuse to retire

IN-DEPTH

Every Wednesday morning, Stephen Christiansen makes the two-and-a-half hour trek from his home in Springfield to Higginsville, Missouri, where he works as a physician at a rural health clinic three days a week.

The 72-year-old, despite being well-past the normal retirement age, still works part-time, Wednesday through Friday, seeing patients for general care, addiction treatment, chronic pain and much more.

For the surgeon-turned-physician, the motivation isn’t money, he said; he has plenty to live off of happily for the rest of his life. Rather, his work is attached to his identity, and he doesn’t know how he would fill the days of the week without his job.

“I am a physician,” Christiansen said at his home in southeast Springfield in March. “It’s not what I do, it’s what I am. So why would I stop?”

“I’m still productive. I still have something to offer. Why would I stop working?”

Christiansen joins a list of baby boomers who are working well past the traditional retirement age. It’s a trend happening across the nation. With roughly 11 million Americans still working who are 65-plus, the older workforce has nearly quadrupled in size since the mid-1980s, according to a 2023 study by the Pew Research Center.

Data shows the national trend is rippling through Springfield’s labor market. In the last three decades, the 65-plus age group of workers has more than doubled its share of the workforce, accounting for nearly 7% of the city’s labor force in 2023, according to Missouri Economic Research and Information Center (MERIC) data.

Why continue working past 65?

While its clear older Americans are making up a bigger chunk of the workforce than they did decades ago, the motivation behind working later-in-life is less clear. As living expenses like health care and housing soar, retirement is getting more costly, and some seniors need more money to happily live out their remaining days.

At the same time, other baby boomers see work as such an integral part of the fabric of their lives that they can’t imagine a day without it. Others say work is just plain fun and keeps them alive.

Christiansen has been seeing patients since he began his post-medical school residency in Kentucky in the late-1970s. About 10 years ago, after closing his private practice in Springfield, he had a brief flirtation with retirement, but he said it didn’t fit well.

“I found that, after about six weeks, I was just no fun at all,” Christiansen said. “I had done all the things that I wanted to do, or was capable of doing, and I’m like ‘What the hell am I going to do?'”

“So, I started looking for a little more part-time work.”

Christiansen said he doesn’t expect to slow down anytime soon, and some days he’s tempted to work even more, but he has refrained.

“The truth is work is a marathon, not a sprint,” he said. “In the end, you have to find a pace that’s comfortable.”

The physician seems to have hit that comfortable pace with three full days each week, even if it is in a small town more than 140 miles away, he said. He can keep going, if he wants to, until the day he dies. He even jokes about it with his colleagues at the clinic.

“I tell the people where I work that my goal is for them to find me Saturday morning …slumped over my computer dead, having finished my last note,” Christiansen said with a laugh.

Nearly one-fifth of seniors are working in America

Mike Russell, an 83 year-old who owns his own automotive shop in Springfield, wakes up every weekday at 4:30 a.m. because he wants to, he said.

He gets to the shop, Mike Russell Automotive, located at 2140 W. Sunset St., at 6:30 a.m. and usually doesn’t wrap up his day until 5 p.m., he said. While he leaves the manual labor for his two employees, he still manages the business, mostly from his office, complete with a landline phone that rings incessantly.

“I don’t turn wrenches anymore, except every once in a while,” Russell said in the shop’s office in March. “I just run the show … I do it all. Estimates, taking customers home, whatever it takes.”

The 83-year-old has no plans to retire anytime soon, he said. The thought of slowing down doesn’t appeal to him.

“I work 10, 11-hour days and have no regrets about that. I like doing it,” said Russell. “We’ve all seen and heard stories about people that retire that don’t last long.”

Inside the numbers of older workers

About 19% of adults aged 65 and older were employed in some fashion in 2023, according to the Pew study. The group has swelled in size, making up a larger share of the American workforce compared to decades past.

In 1987, only 11% of seniors were working.

Baby boomers are being dissuaded of retiring due to a number of reasons. The landscape of the U.S. workforce has changed drastically in the past 30 years. Among the factors:

• A shift from manufacturing and other labor-intensive industries has meant that fewer jobs include strenuous manual labor, and seniors are more comfortable working into old age.
• Older Americans also have higher education levels than similar cohorts did in the past, and higher-educated seniors are more likely to work, according to the study.
• Older Americans are healthier than ever before, making it possible to work later in life.
• Changes to Social Security and the way retirement plans disburse money have incentivized seniors to work later in life. A 1983 overhaul of Social Security gradually raised the “full retirement” age to 67 for people born in 1960 or later.

“For a variety of reasons older Americans are contributing more to the U.S. workforce than was the case 35 years ago,” said Richard Fry, co-author of the study and senior researcher at Pew Research Center in Washington D.C. “There’s more of them, they’re more likely to work. When they work, they’re working more hours.”

Russell has been working so long he wouldn’t know what to do with his time without the shop, he said. He grew up in the service business, starting work at his dad’s shop when he was only nine years old.

In the 1960s, Russell bought his first shop and opened his own business at the corner of Seminole Street and Glenstone Avenue, he said. Besides a brief stint as a fishing guide at Table Rock Lake in the 1970s, Russell has operated his own automotive business in Springfield for most of his life. He’s been in his current shop for nearly a quarter of a century.

In all that time, Russell hasn’t fouled to the job. He loves seeing customers and fixing their problems, he said.

“I just have no desire to be doing anything besides what I’m doing,” Russell said. “I wouldn’t trade this for anything.”

The shop has given him meaning in life, even in old age. The idea of retiring doesn’t sound fulfilling, he said.

“I don’t want to just lay around with nothing to do, getting up everyday wondering what I’m going to do,” Russell said. “I’ve got to have some reason to get up.”

Springfield reflects national trends

The baby boomers of Springfield, like Christiansen and Russell, are working further into old age than the generation before them. In the mid-1990s, there were almost 3,300 Springfield workers aged 65 or older, according to MERIC data. In the past three decades, the number of older workers has more than quadrupled, shooting up to nearly 14,500 in 2023.

Springfield’s labor force has grown substantially over the last three decades. In 1995, the city had abut 147,000 workers. Today’s labor force stands at about 224,000 workers. Older workers are making up a greater share of the city’s labor force. In 1995, older workers accounted for 2.2% of the labor force. By 2023, that share has risen to 6.5%.

“The reason they are contributing more, is yes, there’s more of them,” said the Pew Center’s Fry. “But a significantly greater share of them are employed than used to be the case back in the late 1980s.”

Older workers aren’t just accounting for a larger share of the workforce, they’re making more money and working more hours, according to the Pew study. In 1987, about 47% of workers aged 65 and older worked full time. By 2023, that figure had climbed to 62%.

Due to more full-time older workers, the demographic is working more hours, according to the study. The average older worker put in 1,573 hours in 2023, an increase of 30% compared with 1987 hours. (Full-time work is considered to be 2,080 hours per year.)

The average older worker is also getting paid a lot more than they used to, Fry said. In 2022, workers 65 and older earned $22 per hour, up from $13 per hour in 1987, according to the study.

Earnings for younger workers haven’t increased as much. While younger workers are still making more money than seniors, the pay-gap between the two demographics is shrinking, and it has been for some time.

In 1964, the average annual earnings of senior workers were 19% of the average earnings of workers aged 25 to 64, according to the study. By 1987, that earnings gap had narrowed to 56%. In 2023, the average older worker earned 80% of what an average younger worker earned.

“The age-wage gap has significantly narrowed and that’s kind of to be expected given how much the education of older workers has improved,” Fry said.

As the age-wage gap has narrowed, older workers are contributing a lot more to the overall labor force than they used to. In 2023, older workers in the U.S. accounted for 7% of all wages and salaries paid by employers, more than triple the share in 1987, according to the study.

Education levels rise among senior workers, demographics shift

Part of the rise in senior wages is due to an increase in education levels. Of the older workers today, about 44% have a bachelor’s degree or more education, putting them almost equal with the rest of the workers in the labor force, according to the Pew study. That compares with about 18% in 1987.

“Older workers are not any less educated than their younger counterparts,” Fry said. “Among the population as a whole, there’s this gap in education between older Americans and younger Americans, but not in the workforce.”

Carolyn Larsen, a 78-year-old retired secretary who started her own company with her daughter in 2020, has had a career full of different jobs and callings. She graduated from the University of Missouri in 1967 and immediately started teaching business education, she said.

Life led her to Texas, where she became a secretary at North Texas State University in 1969. In the mid-1970s, she moved back to Missouri, and eventually, she got a job as a secretary at Mercy’s Smith Glynn Callaway Clinic. Larsen spent more than 30 years at the clinic climbing the ranks before retiring as building manager in 2007.

“All of the secretaries and receptionists, the clerical staff, reported directly to me,” Larsen said.

But like a growing share of older Americans, immediately after retiring from Mercy, Larsen followed another passion to a new position and a new career. She began teaching medical terminology at Ozarks Technical Community College. After five years, she retired from that, too.

But she didn’t stay away from work for long.

“Then I began substitute teaching because I needed something to do. I was kind of bored,” Larsen said. “I did that until COVID hit, then they didn’t need substitute teachers.”

Women, particularly educated women, are larger part of workforce

Larsen is representative of one of the biggest shifts in older workers in the past decades: Women are making up a much bigger chunk of the older workforce. In 1964, women accounted for 33% of workers ages 65 and older, according to the study. In 2023, women represented 46% of older workers.

The shift has been, in part, caused by the rising education levels among women in the older workforce. Like Larsen, 42% of women working ages 65 and older in 2023 have at least a four-year college degree, according to the study. In 1987, only 12% of older women had degrees.

In fact, older women workers have nearly caught up to men when it comes to education levels. In 2023, 42% of older women working had a four-year degree, while 45% of older men did, according to the study.

Among workers ages 25 to 64, the trend has completely reversed, with more women holding degrees than their male counterparts.

The rise of women in the older workforce comes at the same time as diversity has increased among the population.

“Like the workforce as a whole, the older workforce is less white,” said Fry, who has been with Pew Research Center for 22 years. “It’s more racially and ethnically diverse than used to be the case.”

While the bulk of both older and younger workers are white, their share has significantly dropped from prior decades, according to the study. In 1987, 88% of older working adults were white. Today, about 75% of older workers are white. At the same time, shares of black and Hispanic adults have risen among both younger and older workers.

Older workers are more likely to be self-employed

After Larsen retired from Mercy and then from teaching, the 78-year-old didn’t slow down. In 2020, she embarked on yet another career path, starting her own company with her daughter.

Their company, CAM Creations, makes a multitude of fabric-related goods. While her daughter manages and promotes the business, Larsen sticks to the sewing.

“I used to make all my own clothes. I used to make all my children’s clothes,” Larsen said at her home in southwest Springfield. “I’ve always been a seamstress and I’ve always enjoyed it.”

With its inception at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company got the wheels turning with unique, fun facemasks. As health guidelines shifted during the pandemic, some people shied away from cloth masks, and CAM Creations had to pivot its business.

The company hit a stride of success with unique book sleeves, Larsen said. After fusing a patterned fabric to a bit of foam, the seamstress can knock out a single book cover in about 15 minutes. The book covers helped launch the company to a level she didn’t expect.

“I never dreamed that it would go to where it has,” Larsen said. “I never dreamed that someday I would make over 7,100 (book covers) or 1,100 masks.”

She now sews about four or five days each week, she said. A year ago, business was booming and she could barely keep up with all the work. Since then, the company has seen a decline in sales and output has decreased a bit. The drop in business doesn’t bother her.

“A year ago at this time, I was behind on the work. There were so many orders coming in,” Larsen said. “But it’s kind of smoothed out, which is fine for me.”

“I’ve already retired two or three times, and I’m like, you know, I don’t want to work full time.”

Larsen and Russell, who has owned his own automotive shop since the 1960s, join a growing list of older Americans who are self-employed. Older workers are more than twice as likely as younger workers to be self-employed, according to the study. In 2023, 23% of workers ages 65 and older worked for themselves, while only 10% of younger workers did.

75-plus workforce nearly doubled since 1987

The two Springfield seniors also are part of a demographic that is the fastest-growing age group in the national workforce: The 75-and-older labor force. About 9% of the age group were employed in 2023, nearly double the share that were working in 1987, according to the study.

CAM Creations, named using the initials of Larsen’s first name, her daughter’s and her granddaughter’s, has expanded to include other small items, like eyeglass holders, tumblers, t-shirts, sweatshirts, stickers and bookmarks.

Larsen said she has debated slowing down on the sewing, but she’s not sure what she would do otherwise. She also enjoys the work and gets a sense of accomplishment from it.

“I had said early last year that I would retire at the end of last year,” Larsen said with chuckle. “I got closer and I thought ‘What are you going to do if you retire?’ So, I’m still doing it.”

After brief retirements, only to move on to another job, Larsen said she craves activity and stimulation. That’s one reason why she’s decided to work into her late-70s.

“I don’t feel like I’m 78 years old,” Larsen said. “I want to stay active. I want to stay busy. I want to keep my mind going. And you know, I just want to be doing things.”

Changes in retirement plans incentivize working later in life

In the past few decades, there’s been a shift in retirement plans offered by employers, which is influencing the working habits of the older generation. The traditional old-style pensions, which incentivized workers to retire at a set age, are becoming increasingly rare, according to the study.

“Those plans, basically, the employer sort of says when you hit a certain age you must retire” to get the benefits, Fry said.

A pension is also known as defined benefit plan, because it commits the employer to regular contributions to a pool of money that is intended to fund payments to employees when they retire, according to Investopedia.

Employers have shifted away from defined benefit plans and toward defined contribution plans, like a 401(k) retirement savings plan, Fry said. These types of plans are less costly to employers and have increased in popularity over the last few decades.

“Effectively, with the waning of traditional, old-style pension plans that used to force people out at, say age 62,” Fry said. “As that’s gone away, people have more incentive to continue working for their employers. They’re not being forced out by the way their pension plan works.”

Changes to the Social Security system have also incentivized seniors to postpone retirement and work later in life, according to the study.

“Back in the 80’s, Social Security funding was sort of at a crossroads,” Fry said. “One of the major reforms they did is they started to raise the age at which you could qualify for your full Social Security benefits.”

The last major change to Social Security funding happened in 1983, when legislation provided for the “full retirement” age to gradually change from 65 to 67. This has encouraged older adults to continue working and delay retirement, according to the study.

“Effectively that made Social Security less generous, in a way,” Fry said. “That’s also given people an incentive to work longer.”

Of workers ages 65 and older, about 36% have the option to participate in an employer- or union-sponsored retirement plan in 2023, according to the Pew study. That’s up from 33% in 1987. The trend is declining among younger workers, with only 41% of those workers having access to such a retirement plan. About 55% had access to one in 1987.

Majority of older Americans aren’t financially prepared for retirement

The first of the baby boomers began turning 65 in 2011, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Since that time, about 10,000 a day have crossed that age threshold. By 2030, all boomers will be at least 65.

There is a disparity of retirement savings between the older baby boomers and the younger ones. The majority of Americans who will turn 65 between 2024 and 2030 are not financially prepared for retirement, according to a April 2024 study by the ALI Retirement Income Institute, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit focused on retirement education.

Between 2024 and 2030, about 30 million Americans will turn 65, according to the study. The group is known as “Peak Boomers” because they represent the “youngest, largest and final cohort of the baby boomer generation.”

Upon retirement, more than half of this group of baby boomers will have assets worth $250,000 or less, making it likely that they will have to rely on Social Security for income, according to the study. Two-thirds of peak boomers will find it difficult to maintain their lifestyle in retirement.

The median retirement savings for women is about 30% less than that of men, according to the study. The average white peak boomer has savings of $299,000, while that figure is $123,000 for Hispanics and $49,000 for Black Americans.

Peak boomers currently fill 10% of U.S. jobs, according to the study. When they retire, job vacancies will surge and there will be slower productivity gains. As this group retires, there will also be burdens on entitlement programs like Social Security.

“America has never seen so many people reaching retirement age over a short period, and well over half of them will find it challenging to meet their needs through their retirements, let alone maintain their current standard of living,” Robert Shapiro, author of the study and former Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs, wrote in the study.

“They lack the protected income that many older boomers have from solid pensions or higher savings.”

Many seniors work to make ends meet

Hannah Scott is a care coordinator at SeniorAge, a Springfield-based nonprofit that hosts a number of services aimed at helping the elderly stay independent. Her job is to help seniors work through Medicare and Medicaid, getting them set up on food stamps, helping with home-delivered meals through the agency and much more.

“I talk with seniors all day, everyday,” Scott said. “Talking with them about different struggles they go through” and “a wide-range of just making sure that they have all the services that they are entitled to.”

More and more seniors are signing up for SeniorAge services, Scott said, showing the growing needs of the aging population. The agency offers a variety of in-home services, including meals, patient companion, home safety, transportation, telephone reassurance and more.

Scott said there are two main areas where rising costs are pressuring seniors in Springfield to seek assistance: Housing and food costs.

“Trying to find housing that is affordable is so hard,” Scott said. “There are things like HUD Housing (and) Section 8, but those wait lists are hard to be able to navigate.”

While home prices and mortgages have soared in the past five years, renters are also facing overwhelmingly increasing costs. In the three years ended in 2022, rent for a 3-bedroom unit in Springfield increased by 92%, according to a Roofstock study. While rents have slightly decreased throughout the city in the last year, the cost still remains high. As of March 2024, the median rent in the city was $1,099, according to Zumper.

The rising cost of groceries and food have pushed seniors to enroll in programs like SeniorAge’s at-home meal delivery, Scott said. At-home food prices rose 11.4% in 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 2023, at-home food prices increased by 5%.

Government assistance is failing to make up for the increase in food costs in many cases, Scott said.

“Some of (Springfield’s seniors) who are on food stamps only get $30 or $40 a month, and that really doesn’t even cover a one-time trip to the store,” Scott said. “To be able to have the ability to just eat is too high for them to get what they need.”

Many seniors in Springfield who are still working, either part-time or full-time, enroll in SeniorAge’s programs to help offset costs, Scott said.

“We have some who are on our home-delivered meals who just can’t cover the cost of meals that are still in the working force,” Scott said. “With the cost of living, we do have quite a few who are still working part-time, doing anything to just try to” survive.

SeniorAge works closely with AARP to get seniors enrolled in its Senior Community Service Employment Program. The program helps low-income, unemployed individuals 55 and older find work in their communities.

“We do have people at our Senior Centers who go through that AARP program to be able to continue to work,” Scott said.

The agency’s Senior Centers offer hot meals, programs and activities to anyone over the age of 60. Scott said she has noticed an increase of working seniors who are still taking advantage of reduced-cost meals. The centers, with two locations in Springfield and a total of seven across Greene County, serve meals Monday through Friday.

“We’re just seeing more and more people who are in need of help because it’s just getting a little bit harder and harder to sustain themselves,” Scott said. “All of that just creates a storm of them not being able to cover their bills.”

More seniors turn to part time work after retirement

Kathy Pittman, who started working at CoxHealth in 1995 and still hasn’t left, said she is finally eyeing retirement in a few years. The 64-year-old nurse has worked at the hospital system for nearly 30 years, with a career sampling a multitude of departments.

In 2017, Pittman began teaching at Cox College at the age of 58 and its become a staple of her life. She said she spends four days a week at the college, with one day each week dedicated to nursing duties at Cox South.

When coming to the college, “I hoped I could teach,” Pittman said in her office in the nursing department of Cox College, located in the Cox North Hospital. “I thought I had a broad enough background in different aspects of nursing that I could cover content reliably well.”

“But what really surprised me was just how much I loved the students. They just took my heart.”

She plans to retire from the college in a few years, when she’ll be 67, she said.

“I don’t know if I’ll quit the hospital, but I will probably be done with full-time work at that time,” Pittman said.

The nurse wants to continue as-needed duties at the hospital, a few days of the week, even after she retires. Pittman, like many older Americans, seems to think of retiring as slowing down, instead of completely stopping. Nearly 45% of employed older adults consider themselves retired, according to a Federal Reserve study.

“I started working when I was 14,” Pittman said. “I’ve just always worked. So, the thought of not working is really kind of foreign to me.”

“As baby boomers, that’s kind of what we were taught. Certainly my parents’ focus was on being a good worker, being a hard worker.”

As living expenses soar, one of her biggest fears of retirement is living without a paycheck, she said.

“I know I have social security and I have a pension, savings,” Pittman said. “Financially, I will be fine, but still, the thought of the change is a little scary to me.”

The older workforce isn’t done growing

While the older workforce’s growing footprint is already establishing the age group’s significance in the labor force, the trend is only expected to grow in the coming decade. Older adults are projected to account for 8.6% of the total labor force in 2032, compared with 6.6% in 2022, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projections.

According to BLS data, workers 65 and older are expected to increase their labor force participation rate in the next decade, one of the few age groups projected to do so. About 21% of older adults will be in the workforce in 2032, a 2 percentage-point increase from 2022 levels.

“More (older) Americans are choosing to work,” said Fry of Pew Research Center. “Is this because they want to or because they have to? We don’t know if this is voluntary or involuntary.”

Christiansen, the physician at the rural health clinic outside of Kansas City, said the motivation behind why baby boomers are working later is complicated. He has peers who need the money and he has peers that work just because they enjoy it. At the same time, some of the boomers he knows just can’t give up the job because they fear they’ll lose too big of a piece of themselves if they retire.

Christiansen admits he falls into the latter group. He grew quite bored in his brief retirement and found he was missing something in life when he wasn’t working. He also points to the altruistic nature of his job as another motivation for working into his 70’s.

“You got to do something with your life. You may as well do something that hopefully helps other people,” Christiansen said. “In my case, I’ve spent a long time getting better at what I do.”

“It would almost be criminal to stop working just because I didn’t want to work anymore. What am I going to do with myself? I have this talent, I should use it.”

Ryan Collins

Ryan Collins is the business and economic development reporter for the Springfield Daily Citizen. Collins graduated from Glendale High School in 2011 before studying journalism and economics at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He previously worked for Bloomberg News. Contact him at (417) 849-2570 or rcollins@sgfcitizen.org. More by Ryan Collins

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