On weekday mornings, Myndie Friedman is out the door just as the sun rises over the Atlantic Ocean, a block from her home in Long Beach, New York.

Friedman’s first stop is a 7:30 a.m. bus, which she takes to a local train station for a roughly hourlong trip into Manhattan’s Midtown neighborhood. Then she hops on the subway before exiting and hoofing it 10 minutes to her office job. Total commute: two hours door to desk, along with another couple of hours for the return trip home.

It would be a challenging daily trek even if Friedman weren’t almost 70 years old.

Still, she has no plans to quit her job as an administrator in a medical office. Friedman, a widow, told CBS News her monthly Social Security check covers only a third of her living expenses.

“I need another two-thirds to live the way I’m living,” she said.

“You have to eat”

Friedman is part of a growing cohort of older Americans for whom retirement today is financially out of reach or who find themselves having to return to work to make ends meet.

Nearly one in five adults aged 65 and older is employed or looking for work, the highest percentage in decades, according to federal labor data and Pew Research. Such workers, found across a range of industries, regions and educational levels, tend to describe their jobs not as a choice but as a financial necessity.

The average Social Security benefit in 2026 is roughly $2,071 a month. But the typical single adult spends a baseline of $4,641 a month, according to SoFi Bank, and that’s before a single dollar goes toward a phone bill, home repairs or a birthday gift for a grandchild.

For many older Americans, that financial gap amounts to a chasm, forcing them back to work at a time they expected, or at least hoped, to be retiring.

“Rising costs are on my mind, and they’re just going to go higher,” Friedman said. “You have to eat. You have to have healthcare. But when you retire, you don’t only want ‘have-tos.’ I’d like to enjoy my life.”

A 2024 AARP survey found that 20% of Americans 50 and older have no retirement savings, while 70% are worried that prices will rise faster than their income.

This crisis has been decades in the making. In 1985, the labor force participation rate for Americans 65 and older hit a historic low of just under 11%.

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