When he’s not hanging out in his Santa Monica home or exploring remote corners of California, Chris Emhardt can be found surveying voting sites and installing the hardware needed to ensure local elections take place smoothly. In 2019 he retired from a four-decade career in similar work at media companies and had planned to simply take it easy and travel. But he’s back on the job and loving it.

Two years ago he got a three-week election project, then a two-month gig, then a half-year. “The difference is I’m not trying to build or advance my career,” the 65-year-old says. He loves that he can just do what’s asked of him and head home at the end of the day—though he says he finds so much purpose in bolstering public elections that he regularly logs more than 40 hours a week. “I don’t mind going 110% for a month,” Emhardt says. “But I wouldn’t want to do that as a full-time job.”

Emhardt is emblematic of a wave of sixty- and seventysomethings who are thriving in part-time, contract, and project work. Many are among the 3 million-plus Americans who retired early during the pandemic but are opting for “returnships”, corporate-speak for flexible arrangements for veteran employees. “We’re seeing more evidence that retirees are looking for project-based work to combat boredom and ageism,” says Jody Greenstone Miller, chief executive officer of Business Talent Group, a subsidiary of recruiter Heidrick & Struggles. She says demand for seasoned, interim leaders has more than doubled in the past year.

Angie Bergner, a vice-president at analytics firm Veris Insights, sees returnships proliferating — everyone from experienced executives who launch initiatives and groom successors to retired truck drivers who sign up for two- to four-week routes. “Older workers are coming back but with very specific needs,” she says. “They’re less concerned about things like perks and offices and just want something that pays reliably and is superflexible.”

Erik Stettler, chief economist at freelancing job platform Toptal, is a keen advocate of returnships. His own interest is informed by his grandfather, a Navy veteran who, decades after being deployed on an aircraft carrier, captained a bike ferry across a 100-foot-wide river in Massachusetts into his late eighties. “For him, it was the same fundamental act,” Stettler says. “He was the captain of the ship, and he was serving others.”

Returnships have grown as labour shortages make recruiting expensive and difficult. “Companies are saying, ‘Rather than spending to hire and train new employees and not knowing if it will last, isn’t it better to retain these known employees?’ ” says Ash Athawale, a managing director at recruiter Robert Half, who’s seen flexible arrangements for retirement-age workers triple since before the pandemic. He says growing numbers of companies are offering returnees shorter hours and schedules to accommodate vacation travel, along with remote and hybrid work arrangements that wouldn’t have been accepted a few years ago.

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Some companies offer bonuses that can reach US$20,000 to bring back valued vets — money that can help rebuild retirement accounts battered by stock market losses. “There’s uncertainty,” Athawale says. “They say, ‘OK, I’ll stay for two more years.’ ” Many such deals are arranged through recruiters, freeing companies from employment regulations and making it easier to cut ties or quickly hire for targeted needs.

Those arrangements can of course create instability for people who want full-time work. “There’s no recourse,” says Rich Sootkoos, CEO of Riverstreamz — the placement firm that helped place Emhardt—who typically handles everything from salary to benefits to termination for returnees. “It’s a weird dynamic; I’m just taking orders from the company,” Sootkoos says. “I’ll say, ‘Hey, Joe, the company is cutting budgets.’ ” But Sootkoos feels the benefits outweigh the downsides and advises older employees to consider project work; he’s had numerous candidates who were turned down for full-time jobs but successfully hired on contract.

Many top recruiting firms have divisions that offer returnships. Recruiters say hiring typically moves swiftly, with projects staffing up in just a few days, without multiple interviews and protracted negotiation. “If a company has an immediate need for someone with supply-chain expertise,” Miller says, “they don’t really care about anything except whether a person has supply-chain expertise and can accomplish what they need done immediately.” BLOOMBERG