Why a Generation of High-Status Professionals Are Rewriting the Rules of Retirement

When media magnate Rupert Murdoch signaled he was ready to retire at 92, observers expressed shock. So soon? A decade younger, 81-year-old Joe Biden was only joking, we assume, when he quipped that he’s looking for another job to follow his presidency. After all, his generation is well represented at the White House, which political correspondent Andrea Mitchell is still covering at 77, and on Capitol Hill, where more than a third of the Senate is over 70. Across the Atlantic, Bernard Arnault continues to expand his LVMH luxury-goods empire at 75, a working age that is beginning to seem young by comparison.

Spreadsheets, deadlines, shareholder demands: Ah, the golden years! What ever became of golfing, gardening, or kicking back with a juicy le Carré? Does anyone actually retire these days? For many with high-status careers—whether in finance, government, or businesses with their own name on the door—the answer is increasingly “Why should I?”

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Take Anthony Fauci, who left his directorship of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases last year, at 82. Don’t expect to find him out on the links. He quickly accepted a professorship at Georgetown University and this year published a memoir, On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service. 

“I am not retiring,” Fauci declared. “After more than 50 years of government service, I plan to pursue the next phase of my career while I still have so much energy and passion for my field.”

Even those who do officially retire sometimes make a U-turn back to work before they’ve gotten the hang of a midday nap. Barry Schwartz, the best-selling author of The Paradox of Choice, announced his retirement at 69 from his professorship at Swarthmore College, near Philadelphia, in order to move closer to family on the West Coast. But the psychologist hadn’t even finished his final semester at the elite liberal-arts school when a chance conversation at an academic conference led to a new teaching role at UC Berkeley. The best part: It was a lighter load, leaving him plenty of time with the grandkids.

In retrospect, Schwartz says that when he put in for retirement, “I had not given any thought to what kind of active intellectual life I would have. I underestimated the importance of social networks and being able to talk with people.”

For a century or so, leaving work for a life of pure leisure was seen as a well-earned right, punctuated by a congratulatory gold watch, a pension, and maybe a party. Embarking on a luxurious retirement—international travel, a new home here or there—was its own status symbol, something to be envied by those who couldn’t afford to maintain their lifestyles without a regular paycheck. Entire industries—and even cities—arose to cater to retirees as they vacationed and resettled into new communities in their 60s and 70s. In fact, until a 1978 federal act outlawed mandatory retirement before the age of 70, and a 1986 law abolished it altogether, many employers required people to step down by 65, establishing an expectation that careers should come to a satisfactory end in life’s seventh decade.

Somehow in the ensuing years, 65 became the new 45.

A few reasons are obvious: Advances in medicine and personal-fitness routines have people living longer and more actively, extending middle-age behaviors and pursuits into those golden years. Technology is enabling people to work more flexibly than ever. The culture is more embracing of conducting business outside the traditional office—Zoom glitches about as often in a downtown skyscraper as in a villa in the South of France, after all—making work life more convenient and often less physically taxing.

Attitudinal shifts may also be quietly fomenting professionals’ hesitation to leave their jobs for good. Satisfaction in retirement has been steadily decreasing since at least 1998, according to findings from the Employee Benefit Research Institute. That year, 60.5 percent of retirees surveyed by the institute for the University of Michigan’s longitudinal Health & Retirement Study, which has been ongoing for 30 years, reported feeling “very satisfied” with their choice; by 2022, the last year for which data is available, that cohort had fallen to 48.2 percent.

One possible explanation for that drop-off: Work has become the primary social community for many professionals, around which the rest of their lives revolves.

“Have you read Bowling Alone?” asks Kira Schabram, a professor at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, referring to Robert D. Putnam’s seminal book about the disintegration of communities, such as bowling leagues. People in the modern era sign fewer petitions, join fewer clubs, know fewer neighbors, and socialize less in general, according to Putnam’s research. We are less civically engaged.

Retirement is “an instance where suddenly you have to make those communities for yourself, but it’s a lot harder than it was in the past,” says Schabram, who studies meaningful work. “You might have the resources to do whatever you want to do, but what does that even look like when there isn’t a framework or a community structure?”

What’s more, seniors who are accustomed to being respected for their outsize power and lauded for their accomplishments face losing that positive feedback—and being relegated to the emeritus section at the back of the room.

“When you tell someone, ‘Hey, I’m retired,’ people attach a meaning to your statement, which is, ‘Oh, you’re happy not to be productive,’ ” says Mo Wang, a psychologist at the University of Florida who studies retirement, is an associate dean at the school’s Warrington College of Business, and directs its Human Resource Research Center.

Consider the synonyms for “retirement” in the Oxford Languages and Merriam-Webster dictionaries: solitude, loneliness, isolation, obscurity, desolation, reclusiveness, withdrawal, disengagement, revulsion. Yikes.

Little wonder, given all these many forces, that the average retirement age for Americans has been creeping upward for 30 years, from 62 to 65 for men, and from 59 to 63 for women, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. It’s telling that working longer is most common among people with higher educations, the self-employed, and those at the top of their professions whose identities are closely tied to their careers, though they’re also the cohort who could most afford to maintain their standard of living without continuing to receive a paycheck.

Wealthy Americans are particularly susceptible to the work-forever argument. “In the United States, actually, we tend to let work define our value,” Wang says. “We let our job define how important we are.” It’s no surprise that successful people often want to keep going.

And going. And going.

This fall, 85-year-old Francis Ford Coppola released his latest film, Megalopolis, starring Adam Driver and Aubrey Plaza. U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley is still politicking at 91. Gregg Popovich continues to coach the San Antonio Spurs at 75. Even pro athletes are toughing it out. Serena Williams hung up her tennis racket at 40, having competed years past the typical expiration date for sports stars. Tom Brady was older still, at 45, when he retired from the NFL.

About a third of those who do imagine enjoying a retired life beat a hasty retreat. Those un-retirees are more likely to be men than women, who tend to have an easier time of it, according to the University of Michigan report. “People retire and realize they don’t want to retire,” Wang says.

Jim Murren, the former chairman and chief executive of MGM Resorts, promised his sons he’d call it quits before he reached 60. So at 59, taking into account that he’d been treated for melanoma, the cancer that killed his father and brother, he informed the company’s board of his intent and began to make arrangements for a more relaxing lifestyle: He bought a 275-acre farm on Chesapeake Bay, built himself an art studio so he could take up painting, and figured he’d spend time fishing.

But after an executive recruiter warned Murren he’d soon become “yesterday’s news,” his type-A personality kicked back in, and his retirement plans fell apart almost immediately. “I got anxious,” says Murren, now 63.

These days, he chairs the board of directors of the commercial-gaming regulatory authority in the U.A.E. and cochairs Cirque du Soleil. He’s chairman and chief executive of Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection and criss-crosses the globe between four homes, from Abu Dhabi to the Cayman Islands.

So how is his work-life balance? “It’s not going to sound like I’m retired if I tell you,” Murren admits.

Still, he does find time to fish these days, and when MGM Resorts casinos were hacked for ransom last year leaving guests locked out of hotel rooms and cash systems, Murren thanked the universe that someone else was dealing with the havoc.

In the years since his own retirement plans morphed into the new teaching gig at UC Berkeley, Schwartz, the psychologist, has enjoyed a gradual professional de-escalation along with his wife, acclaimed cognitive neuroscientist Myrna Schwartz.

“I decided that being close to my kids was more important,” he says. “It wasn’t that I was tired of teaching. It was just, the grandkids change so much from one visit to the next. Not gonna live forever.”

Now 78, he has also stepped away from Berkeley, teaching a course at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and working on a new edition of Paradox. How does he describe himself these days? Not as a retiree. “I’d say I’m a writer,” Schwartz replies.

Nothing suggests that younger generations celebrate their elders’ hanging on to their corner offices well into their eighth and ninth decades. On the contrary, resentment seems to be the prevailing attitude, and seniors report feeling subtly pressured to step aside, despite having no inclination to settle into “solitude, loneliness, isolation, obscurity.”

One billionaire investment banker, who could have given it all up long ago to enjoy his grandchildren, continues to lead high-testosterone deals in his mid-60s. He says clients express surprise that he wants to remain in the thick of the scrum, and he’s annoyed that he’s often asked when he plans to retire.

“It’s too much fun. I like this stuff. I love it!” the banker says of high finance. “That’s the worst part of being 66. You want to work like you’re 36, but people want you to be 66.”

Not everyone, though, loves what they do so much that they want to do it forever. Jürgen Klopp is celebrated as one of the finest soccer coaches in history, yet this year, in a move that dismayed many fans and players, he resigned at only 57 from managing Liverpool, the Premier League team he has led to a host of championships.

“I can understand that it’s a shock for a lot of people in this moment,” Klopp said, ruling out coaching jobs but leaving the door open to another role someday. “It is that I am, how can I say it, running out of energy… I know that I cannot do the job again and again and again and again.”

Some might call that burnout, which is a major cause of quitting work at any age. It’s what Joe Coccimiglio was feeling when he retired from Wall Street at 43. As an all-star equity analyst at Prudential, he had responsibilities that required constant travel (and resulting jet lag), and he was feeling bored by a stock-picking routine from which he couldn’t rest. “I could never shut down,” he says. “I’m very competitive and I didn’t want to lose to anyone.”

Coming out as gay in 2000—groundbreaking in the financial world at the time—led to some awkward moments at the office. He soon left. “After I came out, it just wasn’t that comfortable,” he says. “I was burned out on the sell side. It was being away from Ken, my partner.”

Coccimiglio’s retirement led him to abandon the rewards of ambition at an age when his colleagues were still climbing ladders. “It’s this ego trip. There’s the money. There’s prestige. And once you leave, you’re not anyone anymore. You’re just Joe Coccimiglio,” he says. “I was kind of depressed for a month.”

Then he perked up: The couple bought a house on Fire Island, then moved to Fort Lauderdale, where they built a home for entertaining. They purchased an apartment in Barcelona and traveled. Coccimiglio learned Spanish and took up tournament tennis. “I would spend days planning menus. Ken got into baking,” he says. “It was the happiest eight years of my life.”

His choice dovetailed with a movement that began to emerge at roughly the same time, called FIRE, or Financial Independence, Retire Early. FIRE advocates that people live frugally and stash away money aggressively in their 20s and 30s, then stop working when they have a nest egg at least 25 times their annual living expenses.

One could argue that’s not necessarily enough to live a comfortable retirement, certainly as one reaches the actual elder years. For Coccimiglio, now 67, health issues have set in. Selling their homes in Florida and Barcelona, he and Ken prepared for their third act, buying a three-bedroom prewar apartment in New York’s Sutton Place neighborhood, near family and excellent medical care. “I look back at those years and know that’s why I worked on Wall Street and made all that money,” Coccimiglio says.

Still, he gave up 25 years of salary and bonuses. Any regrets? “I have a lot less money than we would have,” he says, sounding nonetheless sanguine. “We’re worth double what we were when we retired.”

In the history of mankind, the concept of retirement is itself relatively young, emerging out of the industrial revolution as a way to reward workers. In 1881 Otto von Bismarck, the chancellor of the German Empire, proposed to pay a pension to Germans who survived past 70 years old. It soon became an international phenomenon. Public employees in U.S. cities began receiving pensions at about the same time, and by the 1920s the idea had spread to private American corporations as a means of attracting and retaining workers.

One hint that the promises of retirement may be spin: Therapists treat it as a significant life event-like marriage, divorce, and death—that requires caution, planning, and sometimes psychological treatment. Wang cites researchers who have found that most people, given time to adjust, maintain their well-being in retirement. About 5 percent of workers—usually those who had stressful or physically demanding jobs—enjoy a noteworthy boost in contentment.

But a relatively high percentage of retirees experience mild depression or report a decline in emotional health. Those folks, like Murren and Schwartz, are often leaving high-status jobs, losing perks and social standing that went hand in hand with their careers.

Senators, Supreme Court justices, CEOs, performers, and other elite professionals are particularly vulnerable to this poverty of contentment if they don’t have meaningful new rewards awaiting them. In fact, that’s an important reason why many people who retire successfully approach it as an opportunity to shift into a new endeavor—a pursuit more substantial than a hobby. Often it involves something they’d always dreamed of doing but couldn’t.

For Cary Grant, that was raising a child. In 1966, the movie star walked away from a Hollywood career that was still thriving and at 62 took on a job that most people start in their 20s or 30s: He embraced fatherhood and turned to raising the newborn daughter he’d had with his then-wife Dyan Cannon, whose own career as an actress was just taking off.

Producers and his longtime attorney and manager, Stanley Fox, tried to lure him back to acting. “He’d say, ‘Give it up, Stanley,’ ” recalls Jennifer Grant, who regards her father’s retirement as a gift for the whole family, especially since he died, at 82, while she was away at college.

“He had the courage to flip the script on traditional masculine-feminine roles, and my mom went out to work,” Grant says. In reality, he had taken on a new full-time role that fulfilled him for another two decades. “We had breakfast,” she says. “He drove me to school and picked me up.”

Commonly, elite retirees will write books, teach, lecture, or focus on investments. Barry Schwartz’s neuroscientist wife, Myrna, who had cofounded the renowned Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute in Pennsylvania, is now a Bay Area political activist, putting her analytical skills to use studying criminal justice. “She works 30 hours a week being a pain in the ass to everyone she can find,” he says with pride. “She finds it very rewarding.”

The legendary art gallerist Paula Cooper, at 86, continues to be involved with the eponymous New York gallery she founded in 1968. But she took on new partners and stepped back from some duties three years ago in a move that researchers call bridge retirement.

In fact, it’s not unusual for people who have loved what they do to continue doing it in a capacity they can more easily manage.

At the David Yurman jewelry company, 42-year-old Evan Yurman now serves as chief executive of the family firm, pouring his energy into expanding the brand’s stores and jewelry lines. But his parents, founders David and Sybil Yurman, both 82, continue to cochair and lead the brand’s creative direction.

“You don’t come with the tools to quit working. No one thinks they’re getting old,” Evan Yurman observes. “My dad always says, ‘You work to live, and you live to work.’ ”

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