Dee, 67, who lives in Accrington in Lancashire, left school at 14. She worked in factories, hairdressing shops and bars, and did secretarial temp work all over the country before she took a job at HM Revenue and Customs, where she worked full-time for 23 years.
Last year, in May, she began her retirement, but after only a few weeks she realised that she could not afford it because of the rising cost of living. “I had two months off, then I had to return to work,” she says. “I rent my home and I can survive on my state pension of around £800 a month and two small private pensions, but I cannot live. My rent and household bills alone come to just under £700.”
Dee is not alone in her financial predicament. There were almost 100,000 more Britons aged 65 and over in the workforce this spring compared with three months earlier, more than twice the rise in those in their 50s and early 60s.
The rise in economic activity in the UK was spread among all age groups, but was highest among the over-65s.
Dee now works in an administrative role for the NHS, and recently reduced her hours to 26 from 37.5 a week because of the strain on her health.
“I think total retirement is never going to be an option. I don’t think I’ll ever be in a situation where I don’t go to work, so at 70 I’ll go down to perhaps one or two days. It’s depressing.
“I’d like to save up five figures, for emergencies, but with everything going up in price, it’s really, really hard.”
Dee is one of dozens of people aged 65 and over who spoke to the Observer about why they have recently returned to paid work. While some of those who got in touch said they had returned to the workforce because they enjoyed working and keeping active, most said they had done so out of necessity rather than by choice.
HR adviser Sue Picken, from Christchurch, Dorset, who will turn 65 this month, returned to full-time work in January 2022 after 18 months of retirement.
“With living costs rising, I have to work permanently,” she says. “I have three small occupational pensions totalling about £1,000 a month, and my husband has a teacher’s pension, but we can’t afford to live without working. When our energy bills rose to £400 a month, there was no choice but to go back.”
Apart from feeling the pinch because of high inflation, the couple are having to clear debt they accrued during the Covid lockdowns, when they had to financially support their three grownup children. “They are all living in or around London, and two of them were made redundant during the pandemic. We took out a £10,000 loan to help out with their rent and other things for four, five months. I’m working to pay that off, and we still help out now and again. ”
Having to work again is “absolutely exhausting”, Picken says.
“It takes me most of Friday to recover. Sometimes when I’m feeling particularly unwell, I time it and sleep in my car at lunchtime for an hour.
“But we know we are lucky. We can heat our house and eat healthily. We feel for the young people and the old who are struggling to live in this country while others seem to have endless wealth. We are surrounded by people who visit their second homes at weekends, driving 4x4s or electric cars.
“As I work in recruitment, I see lots of people applying for work who are older. This country has truly become a place of haves and have-nots. It feels Dickensian.”
Chris Green, 68, a father of six who lives in a village near Duns in the Scottish Borders, started winding down his small foundry workshop seven years ago, but has now had to abandon his retirement plans.
“After nearly 40 years of self-employed work, I was doing perhaps 10 to 15 hours a week, and had hoped to be retired completely by now,” he says. “But recently, I’ve had to increase my working hours again to about 35 a week.”
He has returned to the grind, Green says, both for his own financial benefit, as his state pension is insufficient to cover rising costs, and to help his self-employed children with their businesses. “Material and other overhead costs are spiralling ever higher and inflation is corroding their profit margins,” he says.
“The cost of living crisis is definitely the main reason for my return to almost-full-time work, which wasn’t planned at all. My rent has risen, and the cost of childminding means I also have to provide free childcare for some of my grandchildren. It’s exhausting – I’m very tired today – but I think I’m going to have to keep going.”
For Vanessa Curran, 66, from Motherwell, North Lanarkshire, retirement in September last year from her job as a store supervisor at Primark also proved to be a short-lived reprieve.
“I went back to work six weeks ago,” she says. “Four hours, three times a week, in a supermarket. I just didn’t have enough funds to live. I make £110 a week now – better than nothing. I was cutting back on everything and couldn’t contribute as much as I used to to our household bills, and I don’t want to depend on my partner financially.”
The government’s cost of living payments, Curran says, “did not touch the sides”. She adds: “It’s just getting harder and harder to get by. I can’t afford to help my children any more. I like to drink Coca-Cola, and can’t drink as much of that as I’d like. I need knickers and socks, I’m buying substandard food.”
Being back at work, Curran says, pushes her to her physical limits. “It’s really hard. I’m knackered. I’m in very poor health – I have COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease] – and now I’ve just been told I might have liver cancer. I don’t know how I’m going to keep this up for long, but I’ll have to carry on – whether that’s two years or 10 years – but I’ll have to work until I drop.”
