Semi-Retired & Unretired Hats

A surprising share of retirees do not stay retired. One in six US retirees is considering a return to work according to a Paychex survey, and T. Rowe Price finds that 20 percent of retirees work full or part time. Among people 55 and older, 37.3 percent were employed in 2024, up from 31.5 percent in 2000. Economists at Boston College's Center for Retirement Research note that for several decades a sizable minority of older Americans have reentered the labor force after an initial retirement, or unretired. Their reasons run from inflation to boredom: one retiree on the Straight Dope boards sat around for a year until his wife told him to get a job, and he ended up at a hardware store. These semi-retired and unretired hats are for that crowd. Badges name the status, and the sentence designs carry the flunked retirement, the briefly retired, the comeback as a consultant, the garage that got cleaned twice in six weeks, and the part-time job taken for the discount. Semi-retired pins and shirts already sell on TeePublic, and the flunked-retirement line earns a second colorway here. This is the going-back side of retirement, distinct from Funny Retirement and Almost Retired, which are about leaving work. Every design is custom embroidered on an unstructured dad hat. Wear one to a new job, or give one to the friend whose retirement did not take.