"It's a direction we have to go in," said Alicia H. Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. "You can let your 401(k) plan build up some more. You can reduce the period that you have to live off your assets."
The economy's long-term shift toward knowledge-based jobs and away from physical labor is another force that might be increasing the rolls of older workers. Already, older employees with higher levels of education seem to be playing a major role in the trend, and some say the psychological rewards rather than money are what motivate them.
"It's interesting work," said Feyk, who has worked at Aerospace Corp. for most of the last 45 years. "It's new challenges."
Feyk helps oversee classified work of contractors on military space and missile systems. "The things that we do, the projects that we look at, have never been done before." Still, it is unclear how far the trend toward working later in life will go. Society is much richer than the days when people worked almost until death, and early retirement continues to hold some of its allure.
Older employees can find themselves scrambling between different jobs, as companies rise and fall and long-term relationships between employer and employee become rarer.
When Jules Lippert's business of selling prebuilt homes went bust in the 1980s, he loaded a van with antiques and spent the next 16 years selling his wares at trade shows around the United States.
Finally wearying of the road, he tried to shift his business to EBay. A couple of years ago, he took up his neighbor's offer to train interviewers for market research.
Now 76, Lippert still works as many as 35 hours a week: "As long as I'm in good health, I see no reason to retire," said the suburban Philadelphia resident. "I would sit around and vegetate."
At the same time, money "is important," said the grandfather of seven. "My wife and I could exist on our combined Social Security plus our IRA, but it would not leave a lot of room for extras."
Employers will play a big role in deciding whether baby boomers' visions of an industrious old age turn out to be fantasy.
Some companies rely on the institutional memory and experience of longtime employees.
"We encourage people to stay with the company," Aerospace spokesman David L. Jonta said. "We have a lot of people that do, and we value that expertise."
