And AARP’s Life Reimagined - a program focused on guiding people through life transitions - recently announced a partnership with Uber aimed at recruiting older drivers. Life Reimagined has 1.4 million members; for Uber, the alliance is part of a strategy to hire hundreds of thousands of drivers as it works to meet surging demand for its service.
If driving strangers around in your own car for hours on end does not sound like an ideal retirement to you, AARP begs to differ. While it is not putting an age limit on applicants, AARP sees the Uber program as ideally suited to the younger end of its constituency - workers over 50 who have been sidelined by economic turbulence.
"The shared economy is offering people an opportunity to follow their hearts, have flexibility in their work, be empowered to make money and be their own bosses," says Adam Sohn, vice president of strategic initiatives at Life Reimagined (http://bit.ly/1c4KZDL).
"And, for millions of people who are doing what they don't love, or have been pushed out of precarious jobs and are having trouble fighting their way back into the workforce, this kind of work also can provide a transition to whatever is next."
Microentrepreneurship certainly offers a path around the age discrimination that older workers face.
In an AARP study released earlier this year, more than half of older workers who lost jobs during the Great Recession said age discrimination had a significant impact on their ability to find new work. But in the gig economy, if you can get the job done, no one cares about your age.
Nearly 25 percent of Uber's drivers are over age 50, according to a study commissioned by the company recently - and among new drivers with no previous professional driving experience, 39 percent are over 50. Three percent were retired before driving for Uber, and 8 percent were unemployed; one in five drivers was employed in a temporary job.
Uber does not disclose data about the earnings of its drivers, but the report states that drivers are making $19 per hour on average.