Independent work: choice, necessity, and the gig economy

part-time work and only 12 percent offer retraining.
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The harsh reality is that millions who are approaching their official retirement age will need 
to continue working additional years because of inadequate savings. About half of US 
households ages 55 and older have no retirement savings to supplement Social Security, 
reflecting the shift from defined-benefit plans to defined-contribution plans.
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 Even those 
who do have some savings face the prospect of limited returns on their investments in a 
perpetually low-interest-rate environment and are more likely to postpone retirement and 
extend their working life.
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But a large share of seniors have non-financial reasons for wanting to stay in the labor force. 
They want to remain active and engaged, but not at the level of a structured full-time job. 
Research has found that many older professionals continue working because they find it 
gratifying, and they enjoy the social interactions of work; some feel they will be bored or will 
lose their sharpness if they fully retire.
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The changing face of retirement: The Aegon retirement readiness survey 2014
, Aegon, July 2014. 
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Retirement security: Most households approaching retirement have low savings
, US Government 
Accountability Office, May 2015.
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  Guido Vanderseypen, 
Pre-retirement saving and the extension of working life: A model-based assessment of 
the impact of low interest rates
, European Commission working paper number 2, 2015. 
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  See, for example, Elizabeth F. Fideler, 
Men still at work: Professionals over sixty and on the job
, Rowman 
& Littlefield, 2014; and Marc Freedman, 
Encore: Finding work that matters in the second half of life
, Public 
Affairs, 2008. In a 2009 Pew Research Center poll that asked seniors why they work, 68 percent said “to feel 
useful and productive,” 59 percent said “to live independently,” 57 percent said “to give myself something to 
do,” and 56 percent said “to be with other people.” 
Flexible independent work opportunities are 
especially well suited to seniors, caregivers, 
and students.
~½
US households 
ages 55+ with no 
retirement savings 
beyond Social 
Security

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McKinsey Global Institute
Independent work: Choice, necessity, and the gig economy
Already, there is evidence that more seniors are choosing to work. In the United States, 
labor force participation among 65- to 74-year-olds increased by 4.3 percentage points from 
2004 to 2014 and is projected to increase by an additional 3.7 percentage points by 2024.
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An analysis of Eurostat data shows that countries with a greater prevalence of part-time 
work (especially Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Norway) also have higher 
labor participation rates among the 54-to-74 age cohort. Independent work enables seniors 
to choose how much to work and when to work—and because they also have access to 
pensions and to national health-care plans, they are less affected than other cohorts by 
some of the downsides of freelancing, such as job security and the lack of benefits.
Seniors are already participating on digital platforms for independent earning. Airbnb 
reports that 10 percent of its hosts are over age 60, and seniors represent its fastest-
growing host demographic, which meshes with the fact that they are the age group most 
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  “Labor force projections to 2024: The labor force is growing, but slowly,” 
Monthly Labor Review
, US Bureau of 
Labor Statistics, December 2015.