If you imagine that age 81 means shuffleboard, golf carts, and sitting on the beach, David Mintz will make you reconsider. The founder and CEO of food brand Tofutti, Mintz works 15-hour shifts, sometimes driving 500 miles a day to visit his factories. He sleeps four or five hours a night and works out every morning. “I’m working harder now than 20 years ago,” he says.
Mintz and others like him are leading a shift toward working later into life. Just 11 percent of people older than age 65 were still working in 1993, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Today, that figure has reached almost 18 percent – and it’s climbing.
Most of these workers are not just putting in a few hours: A 2008 study of people age 50 and older who retired and then went back to work found that 54 percent were employed full time and 19 percent worked more than 41 hours a week.
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