When Tom Morton retired towards the end of 2020, he was optimistic about the next stage of his life.
"I was really looking forward to retirement, I wanted to do different things. I think I wanted to live more of a contemplative life," he says.
"I also had this novel that I've been working on for 10 years. And I thought, oh, great, I'll be able to finish the novel and write sonnets, all that sort of thing.
"I finished the novel. And then I got really depressed.
"I was staring into the existential void and thinking, 'Who the hell am I now?'"
So, the former academic and journalist made the decision to return to the workforce.
He's among an increasing number of Australians taking part in what's been dubbed the great unretirement – reconsidering their retirement plans and instead finding their own way to approach this later-life stage.
'Remarkable' numbers return to work
Between 2019 and 2022, more than 179,000 Australians over the age of 55 rejoined the workforce.
"Since the onset of COVID, the Australian labour market added about half a million workers roughly, and about a third of those have been in this 55-plus age group. So quite a remarkable percentage," KPMG urban economist Terry Rawnsley tells ABC RN's This Working Life.
Sometimes that return to work is out of necessity. The rising cost of living could have played a role here. In the past 12 months until March 2023, household inflation rose 7 per cent.
Joey Moloney, a senior associate at the Grattan Institute, says about half of Australian retirees initially retired involuntarily.
"Being able to choose when you retire or choose to wind down work at your leisurely pace is actually a privilege that's afforded to people with higher wealth and higher education levels," he says.
It's typically white-collar workers that can choose how long they'll keep working, he adds.
"The key reason that people are forced into retiring earlier than they might want to is because of ill health. For example, blue-collar workers make up about 30 per cent of the labour force, but about 60 per cent of workplace injuries typically force people into early retirement," he explains.
There's also been a dramatic shortage of workers since the start of the pandemic. Fewer international migrants were arriving in Australia, so retired workers filled some of the gaps.
Another reason for the return to work is the rise of flexible work, so some workers can return in a part-time capacity rather than going full time.
"Rather than coming back working five days a week, people are working a couple of days a week … helping out maybe their former employer who's struggling to find people to fill jobs, and even working flexibly, maybe a day or two down the coast as they kind of have a semi-retirement lifestyle," Moloney says.
When work is intertwined with identity
For some, like Tom, unretirement is about something more philosophical.
He began to rethink his retirement after watching and following the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow.
"I'd been working on and thinking about climate change for about 10 years as a journalist and as an academic. But [the conference] really made me question, what am I going to do now? How can I contribute? Because I didn't feel that I could walk away from all that work that I had been doing on climate change," he says.
Since then, he's returned to working as a freelancer for various newspapers, covering the topics he cares about most. He also exercises, gardens and meditates to improve his mental health.
But that sense of loss that he first felt when he retired is common, says author Debbie Haski-Leventhal.
"We always define ourselves, our identity, with our job. So losing that could imply for many people, the fear of losing our identity," she says.
There are many happy retirees that found a renewed sense of purpose in their retirement, she adds.
"[But] they had to prepare for that. They had to plan for that. And they had to apply the same ideas about finding meaningfulness at work, to finding meaningfulness in retirement."
Retirement coach Jon Glass also understands the sense of loss when it comes to taking a step back from work.
"I retired from full-time work nine years ago, and at first, I was quite scared by time … I have seven days a week I could exploit," he says.
"[I thought to myself] 'Is time my friend or my enemy? Can I use it productively or am I going to wake up frightened at six o'clock in the morning that there's another 18 hours ahead and I don't know what to do'."
When people leave work, they often miss their social networks, as well as the validation, structure and routine, so replacing some of that can be quite important, he says.
Glass says some people take the three Gs approach – golf, gardening and grandparenting — but that's not for everyone.
He approached this change himself by gradually filling his life with new activities.
"A fundamental question with my clients that flows from them finding their meaning in retired life is answering the big question – who am I?" he says.
"It's a question that is relatively easy to answer when you work [but] as you start to think deeply about your meaning and purpose in retired life, you start to hatch your own answer."
He says it leads to those who retire asking themselves some big questions.
"The Japanese have a wonderful expression for this, which I love, it's called ikigai, and it sums it up beautifully – the reason to get out of bed in the morning," he says.
"Not something you thought about much on Monday at six o'clock as you got out of bed and got ready for work. But in retired life, you have all that freedom."
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