The tough reality of working past 65
Sunday, 7 June 2026
Raising the qualifying age for superannuation could see thousands of older Kiwis have to go back to work to make ends meet. Nikki Macdonald investigates the reality of working past 65.
At 68, Pam King works two jobs. Or at least, two paid jobs.
The Invercargill superannuitant slogs for 15 hours caregiving, mopping and vacuuming for elderly people to help them stay in their homes, and at the start of the year she picked up a second job driving a van taking children to school or tech.
After 30 hours of caring and driving, she comes home exhausted. And anxiety is beginning to gnaw at her rest.
“I’m not sleeping so well. Because I’m doing two jobs, I’m pretty overwhelmed.
“Caregiving is pretty heavy going … If I do a couple a day, I'm physically buggered by the end of the shift.”
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She has to keep working, though, as the pension isn’t enough to live on, even with a mortgage-free home. Hers is the only wage, as her husband is nine years older and not in good health. An agricultural contractor, freezing worker and jack of all trades, he worked until 68, and King reckons he’s paying for that now.
“The day he turned 65, he was diagnosed with something pretty serious, and he kept working for two or three years.There’s no way he could work now. So I’m caregiving for him as well. I’m working it, and living it, 24 hours a day.”
That also means King has scant time for herself. Between the two jobs and the weather, the electric bike she likes to ride is gathering dust.
King is one of a growing number of Kiwis working past the traditional retirement age. At the 2023 census, almost half (44%) of 65 to 69-year-olds still worked full or part time. And a quarter of 70 to 74-year-olds were still in jobs.
There’s no knowing how many keep labouring by choice, and how many by necessity, but that figure will inevitably rise if the superannuation age goes up and older Kiwis are forced to either keep working or rely on KiwiSaver and savings to get by.
Faced with an increasingly unaffordable superannuation bill, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has said National will campaign on lifting the age of eligibility at this year’s election.
For white collar workers, raising the age might not be a huge deal, as longer life expectancy means their retirement will probably still outstretch that of generations before. But for those working “hard yakka“ physical jobs like King, an extra few years can feel like a lifetime.
The sour fruits of hard labour
Anthony Short mentally checks off the builders he’s known.
“Some of the older chippies I’ve been following around for years, decades, quite a few of those are dead just after getting to retirement age - bad health, lung cancer, brain aneurysm.
“They’ve worked hard, and then they’ve retired, and then they died. So a lot of the hands-on tradesmen don’t really get much advantage of the retirement superannuation.”
“I can’t talk now, I’ve got a roof open,” the Whāngarei roofer of 30 years says when I call. At 61, he’s still on the tools and has no plans to give up any time soon.
“I’ll work until I die. I love working.”
The body, though, isn’t quite so enthusiastic about the job. There was the thumb injury that set off painful arthritis. The torn meniscus in his knee that needed surgery. The busted wrist that still niggles constantly, requiring a regular diet of anti-flammatories. And seven years of battling ACC for rehab, after his injuries were deemed age-related.
“I’m working in pain, because I can’t get assistance, because as soon as you get oldish, they just call it degeneration.
“The body struggles. I’ve got things I need to get done soon, like knees. One hand has been used and abused - it's put in nearly 8 million nails.
“I think the timber I've installed on housing in Northland here is all the way to Australia and back if you put it end to end.
“And then you calculate the weight that I've moved, and you go, 'Oh, the poor body's not designed for that'. So lots of things are pretty worn out.”
Short started afresh financially at 50 after a marriage break-up, but he now owns two properties in New Zealand, and four in the Philippines, where his wife is from. So raising the superannuation age is unlikely to leave him hard-up. He might not even access it, if he chooses to move to the Philippines to coddle his grumbling bones.
“It’s warmer there, for an old fellow with a sore body, but most people don’t have that option. I met a builder the other day, and he's 86 I think, his body's broken, he can hardly move, and he's going for social housing because he just doesn't have anything, can't afford with his super to survive.”
Short reckons if the superannuation age has to go up, there should be provision for people who “don’t last as long” to retire earlier, such as those working physical jobs, and those with a lower life expectancy, such as Māori.
“It’s hard to get everything fair in life.”
But it’s not just doing a job that gets harder as you age - getting or keeping one gets tougher too. When Short was injured, he was ditched from a job because they worried he’d be off work for too long and hold up the schedule.
“They cast me away and got a younger person. So that's one of the problems with someone older like me.”
Experienced and wise, or expensive luddites?
When Ian Fraser took an unplanned dive into the job market in his late 50s, he expected finding work to be easy.
As the former managing director of a small to medium-sized business, with three decades of management experience, he figured his skills and CV would sell itself.
“I did 80-odd job applications, and just three interviews…There was a lot of ageism and bias and discrimination against older applicants. Sometimes you’d get an answer - you’re over-qualified, or you’re under-qualified. You get pretty sick of it after a while.”
He got a contract as a catering manager with the Cricket World Cup in Wellington, but when he still couldn’t find work on returning to Auckland, he thought something was rotten in the job market. So he started the Seniors@work platform to link older jobseekers with employers who appreciate the experience they bring.
Supportive businesses range from Westpac to Warehouse Group to New Zealand Post.
While Fraser thinks age bias has reduced since he was sending out CVs, it’s still tough for older jobseekers. For those made redundant, it can take nine months to get back into the workplace.
“People over 65, the numbers working are almost 500% what they were in the year 2000, so there’s been a quantum leap in older people staying in the workforce. But there are still those who are struggling to find work.
“The biggest barrier now is just the economy is so tough. The last three years have been really, really difficult…I think most employers do appreciate mature-aged workers, but if they’re struggling, they’re just not going to be able to fit them in.”
While keeping up with galloping tech change like AI is also a concern, many older workers have seen - and embraced - technology revolutions throughout their careers, Fraser says.
“I say to employers to give these people a chance, and to make courses available.”
Now 74, Fraser still works 30-35 hours a week on Seniors@work, and helping organisations with funding requirements.
“I’ve said I’m going to keep working till I’m 78. I love work, but I need to work. My wife’s a primary school teacher, and we’ve still got a mortgage on our house. I don’t earn huge money, but it is important for us that I earn some money.”
Fraser thinks it’s inevitable that the superannuation age must rise. He liked Bill English’s 2017 plan for it’s long lead-in, with an increase to 67, but not until 2040.
“Unless Winston can wave a magic wand, which seems to be his objective, it’s got to go up. But hopefully with lots of notice, and slowly but surely.”
But he also worries about those doing physical work.
“I do feel desperately sorry for those who have been working in manual jobs - builders, electricians, because their bodies are munted by the time they get to that age. It’s going to be very hard for them. I don’t know what the answer is for those people, because I think by the time they get to 65 they deserve to be on super.”
Of the 8,995 plumbers, gasfitters and drainlayers with active licences in New Zealand, 885 are currently 65 or older. And of the Certified Builders Association members whose birth date is recorded, just 4% are over 65.
Tramways Union Wellington secretary, Kevin O’Sullivan, says there are plenty of driving jobs for older people, and it’s often a refuge for tradies wanting to come off the tools.
“It’s not difficult to get a job as a bus driver, as a pensioner…By far the majority is people who need to keep working, including myself.”
At 72, he still drives a bus one day a week, and runs the union for five days.
“I’m quite happy to keep working. I’m in good shape physically and healthwise, so it’s no problem. But there’s lots of people who struggle.”
Having to be at work 12 or 14 hours a day, with so much sitting, is hard on the health, O’Sullivan says. He reckons a high proportion of bus drivers have diabetes.
“The hours of work mean it’s a very unhealthy lifestyle…Most drivers are in poor health.”
Having been in the business since 1979, O’Sullivan figures he’s edging towards retirement.
“If you like driving and people, it’s a good job. I’m getting close to the end of my time, because I’ve been involved for 45 years.”
Director of recruitment agency Robert Walters, David Lacire, thinks Kiwi employers aren’t ageist. But they do have some unconscious bias.
“New Zealand is very much a culture of future potential, and that’s how people are hiring in New Zealand. We’d rather have someone who can come into a job, do well in the job and grow into the job, instead of having someone who’s got proven experience.”
For people in their 50s and 60s already in work, that’s not generally an issue, as they can stay in their job until they retire, Lacire says.
“It’s a bit harder for those people to re-enter the workforce after they lose their job in that age bracket, because employers are writing and designing their job for that mid-career level, and not really for that older generation.”
Lacire argues older workers are the perfect complement to AI, providing the experience, networks, critical thinking and judgement calls that it can’t.
While the higher salaries of later-career workers can be a stumbling block, older workers are often looking for flexible hours or contracts, he says.
“We’ve been placing a few people in that age bracket at three or four days a week. You could have someone that age with all that knowledge that can do so much more work in two or four days, and cost you the same as someone a bit more junior at five days a week.”
The missing piece to accommodating more older workers, is training the hirers to recognise their value, Lacire says.
Does more older workers mean fewer jobs for young people?
There are about 117,000 Kiwis aged 65 and 66.
If the 56% of them who don’t work suddenly flooded the job market, would that mean fewer jobs for everyone else?
“That is a common mistake,” says economist Craig Renney.
In fact, more workers overall should create more jobs, he says.
“More people in work means more output, means more wages expended into the economy, which means more opportunities for everyone.”
There may be a temporary impact when a super age rise first kicks in, as the people who were set to retire stay in their jobs. But once the change beds in, roughly the same number of people will leave jobs each year, they’ll just be a bit older when they do.
But any change is likely to impact different people and populations differently.
When the UK increased its pension age for women from 60 to 66, the employment rate of those in the most deprived areas rose 13 percentage points, while the rate of those in the least deprived areas went up by just 4 percentage points. In other words, many more poor women had to go back to work than wealthier women.
Worst affected were women already out of a job in their late 50s. They didn’t go back to work, but instead suffered a big income hit, research found.
Back in Invercargill, Pam King hopes to retire from caregiving next year. She loves the driving job, though, so will keep that up if her health allows.
If the government wants to increase the superannuation age for people like her, she argues they need higher wages during their working life. Had the pay equity claims not been scrapped, she wouldn’t have needed a second job, she says.
“They should pay us more when we're younger, so we can get a decent nest egg. I’ve got KiwiSaver, but that's certainly not going to keep us living into my 80s or 90s, if I live that long.”