Canadians are working past retirement, but not because they want to

At the age of 70, James Kadri is still putting in the work at his local grocery store in Calgary. He's worked there for 35 years, and relies on it and two other part-time jobs to make ends meet.

"If it wasn't for the night job, I'd be broke or bankrupt, you know, and then where would I be," Kadri told The Cost of Living.

"It's been bad because, yes, inflation, there's a lot of price hikes and everything, you know. So I'm careful how I spend my money." 

More than half of Canadians still in the workforce past the age of 60 are there by necessity, not choice, according to a Labour Force Survey from Statistics Canada in 2022. It cited essential expenses and pension ineligibility as the primary reasons people continued working. 

And a report from February found fewer people had retired in the past year, compared to the year before, among people aged 55 to 64. 

Kadri says he is certainly working out of necessity. He had a line of credit which has been changed into a mortgage that he is working to pay off, along with a mortgage on his home.

He says those payments cost him $1,000 every two weeks. He says he gets about $1,200 a month from a combination of Old Age Security and the Canada Pension Plan. But it's not enough for him to get by without having a job, or three, as the grocery store doesn't provide stable, full-time hours. 

"There's little left for the bills and little left for the food," said Kadri.

Bill VanGorder has heard stories like Kadri's before, and is even working past retirement himself. Since VanGorder retired at the age of 63, he has worked four full-time jobs at various times and is now the chief operating officer with the Canadian Association of Retired Persons. 

"More and more people are having to go back to work because they just need the money. They don't have the income they need. People don't have the retirement savings. They don't have the pension plans," said VanGorder.

VanGorder says many people he has talked to would like to retire, or at least cut back on work, but are struggling to keep up with the increasing cost of living. 

"They don't have the government support that they used to have," said VanGorder.

"Inflation has gone up much quicker than the increases in government support that's there, especially for low-income older Canadians."

Since early 2021, Canadians have seen a sharp rise in inflation. And while that has cooled off slightly, the inflation rate went up again last month.