Seniors Are Starting Businesses in Their 70s and 80s

Age isn’t stopping older entrepreneurs from launching new ventures.

About 30% of Americans in their 70s, roughly 1.3 million people, are running their own businesses, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report. That rate is almost twice as high as the percentage of self-employed Americans in their 60s, the outlet notes.

Meanwhile, Business Insider reports that around 27% of people in their 80s are also working for themselves, which is about the same as the national average for self-employment.

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While some of these older workers turned to entrepreneurship by choice, with 65% of Americans polled in the 2019 UPS Inside Small Business survey showing interest in starting a business in retirement, many of these “silver startups” were founded out of necessity. Business owners in their 80s told BI that they recently started their companies after being laid off, experiencing financial setbacks, or handling health issues that made full-time work unmanageable. They mentioned applying to jobs, but facing rejection in a “no-hire, no-fire” job market.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 19.5% of Americans aged 65 and older were part of the workforce by either working or looking for work in 2024 — nearly double from 10.8% back in 1985.

Finances have played a major role in this uptick; in recent years, the threshold for a comfortable retirement has been steadily increasing. A report released earlier this year by Northwestern Mutual found that Americans think they will need $1.26 million to retire by age 65, up from $1.05 million in 2021.

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Apart from earning extra cash, some entrepreneurial seniors hope to create a product or service that could improve lives. For example, 70-year-old George Koenig recently launched eCaregivers, a platform that connects families with care providers, based on his two decades of experience running a home-care agency.

“I started to see a trend where the cost of care was beyond the average person’s ability to afford it,” Koenig told WSJ. He estimated that eCaregivers can save families 30% to 50% on care costs.

Meanwhile, 81-year-old Dianne Michels juggles two jobs: She runs Possibility Partners, a consulting firm she founded that helps companies increase productivity and retention, and also works shifts at Trader Joe’s to help pay the bills. She hopes to focus on her business full-time one day, and says she wants people to focus on her message, not her age.

“Part of me never wants anybody to know how old I am because I don’t want them to treat me like I’m an old person,” Michels told BI.

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Cal Halvorsen, an associate professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis, told BI that older Americans who start businesses are typically more active and “physically engaged” with their communities because they are going out to meet customers and build relationships.

However, Halvorsen pointed out that most of these older entrepreneurs aren’t hiring employees and are more likely to be solopreneurs, running the business themselves.

“They’re starting businesses because it provides them with supplemental income and something they care about,” Halvorsen told the outlet.