Retirees return to work

Luckily, I still have a job. I am happy to still have a job. I hope to have a job for a while. But I'm in my late 50's and thoughts of retirement are hard to avoid. My father-in-law retired at about 55, my Dad at 62. So I'm sympathetic to the people who now have to "un-retire due to market conditions."

From WSJ:

Retirees whose nest eggs have cracked wide open should go out and find a job.

Easier said than done.

Amen to that. I imagine once you are out of the work force it's very hard to squeeze back in. And if you've been retired for a while, you're likely starting out a few rungs down and with even mundane things unfamiliar.

It's quite a switch from her former firm, where, "if I wanted something done, I picked up the phone and [the support staff] came to my desk," she says. "Here, when I come in in the morning, I start by running the backup tape [on the office computer]. My second job is to make coffee. They had to teach me how to use a postage meter."

Even the act of filling out job applications became dispiriting; frequently, he had to squeeze into a small kiosk or booth within the store to complete the paperwork. It "probably took me 20 minutes longer than anyone else to do," Mr. McNally says, because he found some of the keyboards too small and the spaces too confining.

And just to state the obvious: every retiree that take a job is (a) taking a job that would otherwise go to someone else, and (b) overall this puts more downward pressure on wages.

I don't have a solution here; less money = more work.