https://www.businessinsider.com/older-american-workers-health-issues-challenges-disabilities-2025-11Patricia Willson, 93, stares intently at her leg as her nurse unwraps layers of bandages, revealing a scar that, to Willson's elation, is nowhere near as gruesome as it had been months ago.
Hunched over from a fractured back, Willson scrolls through her phone to remind her nurse what the scar had looked like. Last December, she sliced her leg open on a box. A few months later, the three-inch gash got infected.
"It scared me so bad when my legs started hurting," Willson tells her nurse, as Business Insider visited her home in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, earlier this year.
"You're a medical masterpiece," her nurse says. "You've been through a lot. Did you mention how many times you've broken a bone?"
"Well, I've had 14 broken arms," Willson replies.
As she inches back to her desk once her leg is tended to, Willson stops to clear off a stack of papers. Nestled between bills and medical records on one side of the desk sits a stapled-together printout of 50 websites for finding freelance work. Tucked away on the other side is a slightly wrinkled cover letter she's been sending to companies.
"I really need a job," she says under her breath.
There aren't too many people her age looking for work, she acknowledges somberly. Willson, a mother of six, worked in payroll at companies like Pfizer before opening a home rental business in 2006, which she runs with her daughter and her son-in-law. Until four years ago, Willson was on her feet doing chores around the property; she has since become less able to perform physical tasks.
"When you don't know what to do, you don't do anything," Willson says. "Things snowballed on me, and I did not foresee that things would get worse."
She's one of the nearly 1.4 million people over age 65 who have a disability and still work — whether by choice, like some, or by necessity, like Willson, who says that after paying all her bills, she sometimes struggles to have extra money left at the end of the month to buy a full cart of groceries.
On a recent group call AARP held about applying for jobs, Willson suspected she was the oldest there by at least a decade. With almost nothing in savings, even with Social Security, she's spent hours each day browsing remote jobs and educating herself on what may be out there, knowing full well that most companies might not consider someone at her age.
Some nights, she says, the stress of her situation keeps her from sleeping.
"I'm worried every night when I go to bed that what I have isn't going to last until I die," Willson says. "For God's sake, I should have saved every penny I could save."
It's a growing reality that older Americans are increasingly relying on work to make ends meet. Nearly 550,000 were working into their 80s and beyond as of 2023, according to a Business Insider analysis of 2023 Census data. That's over 4% of the population aged 80 and above.
Of the more than 175 people 80 and older who spoke to Business Insider about working later in life, most mentioned some health issue as a challenge. Common ones included arthritis, mobility impairments, heart disease, hearing loss, and memory problems. Most of these didn't prevent them from performing their job tasks.