What jobs for 60+ year olds?

It's a beautiful job.
I get to help families at some of the lowest points of their lives.
Helping to organise someone's final journey is an honour, a joy and a privilege.

I do seriously wish I had done this years ago.

I will never forget hiring a guy in his early 60s. His CV had loads of experience but his way of working was archaic and unproductive. He would print everything (despite being asked to reduce his paper use), mark up documents in pencil then painstakingly slowly type changes (he was disappointed that the team did not have secretaries to do this).He was really slow at excel & basically anything on a computer. He was really clever and technically experienced but the junior could just do 5 times more than him in the time he spent avoiding technology.

In my industry (financial services) lots of people tend to shift to part time or short term contract work as they age. However there is definitely a big raft of people who have lost some mental accuity, adaptability, capacity to learn new ways of working and memory by their 60s and its a huge struggle, they aren't very employable in our industry. We have to normalise accepting lower wages as we age and are no longer working at our peak.

I personally am saving every penny i can to limit the extent i need to work in my 60s

The software might be cheaper, but the robots aren't.

I can understand that, I struggle as a customer nowadays understanding some operators. Hospital reception could be an option? I always found face to face ok, I was on a council help desk, then in a housing office for a while. Local authorities have lots of departments, most have admin support. Hospitals likewise, and ward clerks.

Good suggestion from @SallyS6 re charities as well.

Working for charity or health and social care, bank or part time. I work for a charity in HR, most employees are over 55, one has just retired at 77. It's a lovely work environment. I'm in my 30s, one of the youngest employees. Lot's of people still work over 60, plenty of employers will want their experience, unfortunately expect lower pay.

The thing that puts me off that type of job (as an older person) is I can’t understand what people are saying on the phone a lot of the time. I’m not deaf but people on phones asking me questions just seems to turn into a muffled white noise. It’s made me afraid of answering phones on a professional level. 🙇‍♀️

Try customer service jobs in your local council, and in the NHS. If you can sit at a desk, have some basic IT and good communication skills there are jobs. After redundancy, I got a new basic level clerical job at 50, got promoted, then took retirement at 60. After that I got a couple of low level admin part time jobs, retired fully at 64. All public sector.

Not many people dream of being a porter but if your back's against the wall...

Me too.

Nothing wrong with being a porter but it’s not really what years of slogging at law school was for (not that I went to law school). Maybe some lawyers love their job and don’t want to be porters or anything else?

Just my bad interviewing skills 😁

Second interviewer must have been at least 30 year’s younger than me and asked where I saw myself in five year’s time 😖

Yes. Why not? Are they considered too good to do such jobs?

I work in welfare rights. Someone told me the other day that a friend of theirs completed a PIP application using ChatGPT. I'm looking forward to hearing how that went!

I'll be 70 next month and am still working, but will be retiring at the end of September. I'm finding it harder to remember new stuff and have to look things up a lot more often...

100% that is what our economy is based on now. That and over priced housing stock, that people who work part time in retail can't afford to buy.
I blame Margaret Thatcher! (for everything)

Also my DH who at 73 is still very hands on in the software company he founded in his mid 60s!

Surely they will be swallowed up as fast the employer can because it's cheaper.

I'm sorry you didn't, but it might not have been due to your age.

I’m early 60s, I went for two part-time receptionist jobs last year, I didn’t get either 😭

They might struggle to get employment in their specific field and on the same salary. There are jobs out there and depending on your skills and how flexible you're prepared to be there are opportunities for older workers.

This is the problem.

Wrt everyone saying 'retail'. I'm 64 and I'm having to retire early from my retail job. Standing for hours and lifting and carrying heavy boxes is just getting beyond me, and I'm VERY fit (training for half marathon, spin classes, Pilates etc). The wear and tear on joints and spine is rough.

I completely disagree. I work in technology. Office jobs and admin are the closest to being enhanced in the short and mid term, and ultimately replaced by AI. The legions of jobs there used to be entering data or copying data between spreadsheets or writing summaries of documents are already being replaced. More advanced forms of information processing like translation, legal work and ideation are also areas where even basic AI in Microsoft tools can really help, and more advanced systems can do huge amounts of work that just 2 years ago needed lots of people.
Whereas more manual and human-facing tasks like plumbing, electricians, teachers, medics etc won’t be replaced until/unless we have robots.

For long term employment I’d say the more human-facing communication skills you have the better and the more physical, practical skills the better. The manual workers will be the new elites.

I am 60 and would love a part time job. I worked in retail and childcare for years, then was on home duties as a foster carer. I am in really good general health but feel that my knees and back wouldn't be up to retail or working with small children. I am very good with people, am a good communicater and I have basic computer skills, no idea what i could do really. Part time receptionist or something like that would be brilliant, but jobs like that are like gold dust where I live. I will be following this thread with interest.

I must admit at 60 and63 I’m glad we’ve had our own business for 22 years and it can be ‘downscaled ‘ too