Retirement among Philadelphians not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ experience, new Pew report shows

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Most Philadelphians aged 65 and older are no longer working, but data show that the number of seniors who are keeping their jobs or returning to the workforce is growing.

Residents across the city said financial savings, concerns about health insurance and costs, physical limitations and caregiving responsibilities are all factors in how and when they can retire, according to a recent report from Pew Charitable Trusts.

“There’s no kind of one-size-fits-all answer,” said Alix Sullivan, senior officer of Pew’s research and policy initiative. “What this really showed us was that it’s just really different for everyone and no two people sort of arrive at the circumstances in the same exact way.”

Philly’s older population is steadily growing, with an estimated 230,000 people who are already 65 and older, census data shows.

Only about 14% of city seniors remained in the workforce in 2013, but that rose to more than 17% by 2023, Pew researchers found.

Pew held focus groups with more than two dozen seniors across the city, some retired and some still working. The snapshot of responses showed that the circumstances that lead to retirement varied greatly.

“A lot of people talked about health problems or injuries that sort of, over time, led them to be able to work less and less before ultimately retiring,” Sullivan said.

Others said changes to the workplace related to new uses of technology, as well as culture changes stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, contributed to decisions to leave, survey outcomes showed.

For many residents, financial security was a major factor in calculating the feasibility of retirement. People who felt like they had saved enough money and were eligible for Social Security benefits, or had gotten retirement offers from employers, said they were able to leave their jobs.

But others reported that they needed to stay employed and keep a steady income to afford rising costs of daily living. Concerns over the costs of health care and future long-term care also influenced people’s decisions to stay in the workforce.

Several seniors said they wanted to keep their employer-based health insurance a little while longer to ensure coverage for a younger spouse or partner.

“And that was sort of the primary driver for staying in their job until their spouse reached the age of 65 as well, so that they could retire and both enroll in Medicare,” Sullivan said.

But staying in the workforce sometimes exceeded financial factors or other concerns. People said their jobs were a crucial part of who they are and that their roles continued to give them purpose.

Older residents in Greater Philadelphia on retirement

Veteran radio host Kathy O’Connell, 74, never thought she’d live long enough to even consider retirement after most of her family members died young.

But after 40 years in public radio, the host of WXPN’s popular show “Kids Corner” recently announced she will retire at the end of June.

“It’s hitting me and yet, it’s still all good,” O’Connell said. “It’s very — boy, it’s a weird thing.”

Her grandmother had instilled a “work-until-you-drop-dead” mentality, she said while laughing. That didn’t seem such a bad idea, O’Connell said, considering she loved her job and what she did.

But she eventually realized that retirement would be more than financially feasible through benefits from her employer, the University of Pennsylvania, and Social Security, which she had been paying into since she was 16.

A changing landscape in public radio has also played a role, O’Connell said. There are also a lot more options and alternatives for children’s educational programming today than there were when she launched “Kids Corner” in 1988.

“Getting kids, especially, to do appointment listening for radio, that’s a big ask in 2026,” she said. “So, maybe the role ‘Kids Corner’ played, you know, it’s time to move on. It’s time.”

Still, she’s leaving in a good place and considers it a privilege to be retiring on her own terms, because she knows that isn’t the case for everyone.

Marianne Roche also found a pathway to retirement after working decades in Philadelphia in disability services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

She officially retired from her longtime career in 2014, which freed up time for her to study Eastern medicine practices like reflexology and acupressure.

Roche, now 77, continues to work a couple hours a week providing this type of care to people with disabilities. She meets with different clients in the Greater Philadelphia area.

“It’s fulfilling in a way that moment to moment you don’t always get in other jobs,” she said. “People want you there. We all want to be treated specially, and this is a way of treating someone specially.”

A desire to continue serving others drove her back into the workforce, even to a partial degree. She’s going to continue working for as long as she can.

“I have no intentions of thinking about ending it until a time comes when, like it does for everybody, where I can’t,” Roche said. “But right now, as long as I can, I’m going to do it.”

For people like Nancy Kenny, they are patiently waiting until it’s their turn for retirement. Kenny, 64, who lives in Moorestown, New Jersey, said she estimates she’s about three years away from being able to leave her job as a school assistant behavioral analyst.

She’s looking forward to joining many of her friends and other colleagues who have already retired.

“​​I want to go out to lunch with my friends, I want to enjoy my garden. I want to do all those little things. Little things — they’re not big things,” she said.

But Kenny needs the financial pieces to fall into place. She’ll be eligible for a full state pension after she reaches 25 years of service in a couple years. She’ll hit that milestone a bit later than her peers, because she started her career after staying at home for about 11 years to raise three children.

After 65, she’ll also be eligible for Medicare health insurance, which she will need once she loses her employer-based coverage.

Preparing for retirement is like doing a lot of homework, Kenny said.

“You have to do math all the time,” she said and laughed.

As she waits, she’ll be busy caring for kindergarteners with intellectual and developmental disabilities. At times, it can be physically taxing.

“I am thankful that I can still run after them, I can still catch them. And you know, there’s a lot of bending down, getting down on the floor, changing diapers, I do all that,” she said. “But I think, ‘Am I going to do it three years from now? Can I keep doing this?’”

She also finds it more difficult to relate to her colleagues at work, who are great, she said, but much younger.

“So I don’t belong there anymore, you know,” Kenny said. “It’s time for me to move on and I recognize that.”