Work after retirement: worklife transitions of career public employees

Abstract

Engaging in paid employment after claiming retirement benefits may be an important avenue for individuals to work longer as life expectancies rise. After separating from one's career employer, individuals may engage in paid work to stay active or to supplement their current level of retirement savings or both. Individuals who choose not to work after claiming may be expressing their preference to stay retired, perhaps because their retirement income is sufficient. However, the decision to work after claiming may be driven by the lack of retirement planning and insufficient savings, while the lack of post-claiming work may reflect the inability to find adequate employment opportunities. We use administrative records merged with panel data from several surveys of public employees in North Carolina to study the decision to engage in paid work after claiming retirement benefits. More than 60% of active workers plan to work after claiming benefits, while only around 42% of the same sample of individuals have engaged in post-claiming paid work in the first few years after leaving public sector employment. Despite this gap, stated work plans are strongly predictive of actual post-claiming work behavior. Our final analysis uses self-reported measures to gauge the financial well-being of our sample in the early years after leaving career employment.

Comparison of Retirement Financial Preparation Based on Demographic Factors: A Study of Teachers

“…Despite the workplace retirement plan, women are more likely to experience financial difficulties during retirement (Clark and Liu, 2021). Many women deal with both work, namely work in the office and work at home, such as taking care of their children, managing the house, attending to their husbands, and so on.…”

Retirement decisions in a changing labor market

“…Perhaps surprisingly, the respondents did not place much emphasis on access to part-time work. Clark et al (2020) explore working behavior and financial well-being of North Carolina public employees after retirement. To do so, they conducted three surveys of teachers and other state and local employees in North Carolina who were working full-time in 2014 and were aged 50 and over.…”