Retirement Isn’t a Cliff. You’re Allowed to Take the Stairs.

The picture most of us carry

Most of us picture retirement as a cliff. You work full time on Friday, there’s cake in the lunchroom, and on Monday you’re retired. Done. Over the edge.

Not that we’re expecting something traumatic. It’s just an abrupt change: a hard stop on your working life, and a new life begins.

Well, for a lot of Canadians it doesn’t work that way anymore.

In April 2026, Statistics Canada reported that one in ten Canadians 55 and over who had retired was working again in 2023, up from 7% in 2019. Almost three-quarters of them were working part time, and a third were self-employed. Among retirees in their late 50s, it was one in four.

And it isn’t only about money. In 2025, a record 15.2% of Canadians 65 and over were working or looking for work. Of the seniors working part time, eight in ten said it was their own choice. On average they worked about 16 hours a week.

That looks a lot more like a set of stairs than a cliff. And the research on how people make the move is a lot more encouraging than the stories we usually hear.

Who this is for

Anyone with a retirement date somewhere on the horizon, anyone in the first few years of it, and anyone wondering whether “all or nothing” is really the only option.

Why it matters

Here’s the encouraging part. One large American study followed about 2,000 retirees through the move from work to retirement. Roughly seven in ten kept their sense of well-being the whole way through, with no drop. People who eased out through some kind of part-time or “bridge” job were more likely to be in that steady group.

So a bumpy first year happens, but it isn’t the rule. And the stairs are something you can build on purpose.

Ease out instead of jumping

The simplest version of the stairs is cutting your hours before you stop.

Some employers have a formal way to do it. If you work for the federal public service and you’re within two years of an unreduced pension, you can ask to cut your week by up to two days, for up to two years. Your pay drops, but your pension and benefit contributions carry on at the full-time level. You agree to resign at the end, and your manager has to approve it. In Quebec, some public sector pension plans offer a phased departure, with their own rules.

Most private employers don’t have a program. That doesn’t mean the answer is no. It means it’s a conversation, and the time to have it is a year or two out, not the month before. It might mean asking about contract or part-time work. Or it might mean finding work with one of your employer’s clients or suppliers.

Say you’re a payroll supervisor who has trained half the department. A three-day week for your last year, while you hand things over, can suit your employer as much as it suits you. So ask!

The CPP rule a lot of people have backwards

Now, this is the one that surprises people.

A lot of Canadians believe that if you start your CPP, you have to stop working, or that working will cut your pension. That used to be partly true. Before 2012, if you took CPP before 65, you had to stop working, or cut your earnings way back, for two months first. That rule, the “work cessation test,” was removed on January 1, 2012.

Today the federal government’s own CPP page says it plainly: “Your CPP retirement pension will not be reduced if you work while receiving it.”

And it gets better. If you’re working and on CPP:

• Between 60 and 64, you keep paying CPP contributions, and so does your employer.
• Between 65 and 69, you can choose to stop contributing by filing form CPT30. If you’re self-employed, you opt out on your tax return instead.
• At 70, contributions stop.

Every year you contribute while you’re collecting CPP earns you a Post-Retirement Benefit. It’s added to your pension the following year, and it’s paid for life.

So there IS an income test to watch… it’s just on Old Age Security.

As of October 26, 2026: OAS is reduced by 15 cents for every dollar of net income above $93,454 for 2025 income (affecting payments from July 2026 to June 2027) and above $95,323 for 2026 income (affecting payments from July 2027 to June 2028). These thresholds change every year, so check the Government of Canada’s OAS recovery tax page before you plan around them.

If a few days of work a week would push you near that line, that’s a good question for a certified financial planner or your tax preparer.

A quick note: I’m not a financial advisor, and nothing here is financial advice. These rules change, and everyone’s situation is different, so please confirm yours with Service Canada, your accountant or your financial advisor before you make any decisions.

Keep a foot in your own field

If you do go back to some paid work, the research has a useful hint about what kind.

A study of more than 12,000 Americans, followed for six years, compared people who took a bridge job with people who stopped working completely. The bridge-job group had fewer major illnesses and fewer day-to-day physical limitations. But only the people working in their own field also had better mental health. The authors think people pushed into unrelated work by money worries miss some of the benefit.

That’s an association, not proof. But it lines up with common sense. Work you already know is less stressful, and you still get to be good at something.

So picture what that might look like for you:

• A bookkeeper who now does tax season for a handful of small businesses, then takes the summer off.
• A nurse who picks up a few casual shifts a month.
• A tradesperson who stops lifting and starts consulting, or teaching apprentices.
• A teacher who tutors two afternoons a week.
• A professional who takes on consulting work or joins an advisory board. Some boards pay, and many non-profit boards are volunteer roles.

A third of Canadians working after retirement are self-employed, and that’s more or less me. I spent 25 years in transportation logistics, making sure things got where they needed to be, on time. Now I’m retired, and I run SIDETRAKKED, which uses a lot of the same skills pointed at travel planning.

If there are two of you

Couples rarely retire on the same day. A Statistics Canada study of dual-earner couples who retired around 2001 found that only about three in ten retired within two years of each other.

The research on couples is older and mostly American, but one finding stands out. The hardest thing for many couples is the period when one of you is home and the other is still working. Once both have settled into retirement, couples report the highest satisfaction of all.

So talk about that gap early. Who’s doing what with the extra time at home? What does each of you want your week to look like? And is there something you’ll do together once you’re both free?

Who to call

I’m not a financial planner, and I don’t pretend to be. For CPP and OAS questions and your contribution history, start with Service Canada. Before you agree to reduced hours, ask your pension plan administrator or HR what it does to your pension. For the bigger picture, look for a certified financial planner (CFP) or qualified associate financial planner (QAFP) through FP Canada, and ask how they’re paid. I keep a fuller list on the Resources page.

Try this

• Write down three things you enjoy about work that you’d miss, then one way to keep each that doesn’t involve your current job.
• If you’re within a couple of years of retiring, ask your employer what reduced hours would look like.
• Log into My Service Canada Account and look at your CPP statement of contributions. It takes the guesswork out of your planning.
• If there are two of you, talk about the months when only one of you will be retired.

One optional next step

Take one sheet of paper and draw three columns: work, play and give. Under each, write one thing you’d like to be doing a year after you retire. Make it something you could actually start.

If the play and give columns are harder to fill than you expected, that’s normal. I wrote a companion piece about what helps once you have the time back, from volunteering to classes to travel. And if all three columns are already full, you’re on the stairs. Enjoy the climb!

Sources: Statistics Canada, Retirement and post-retirement employment among older Canadians (April 2026) · Statistics Canada, A record number of Canadian seniors worked in 2025 (April 2026) · Government of Canada, CPP: do you qualify · Government of Canada, CPP Post-Retirement Benefit eligibility · Canada Gazette, repeal of the CPP work cessation test (2013) · CBC News, CPP changes in 2012 · Government of Canada, OAS recovery tax · Government of Canada, Working part-time and pre-retirement transition leave · Government of Canada, Pre-retirement transition leave · Retraite Québec, Leaving a public sector job gradually (January 2026) · Wang 2007, retirement adjustment patterns (Health and Retirement Study) · Hsu and others 2025, review of retirement adjustment patterns (Frontiers in Psychology) · Zhan and others 2009, bridge employment and retirees’ health (American Psychological Association) · Statistics Canada, Retiring together, or not (2008) · Cornell University, couples and the move to retirement (2001) · FP Canada. Last verified October 28, 2026. Pension rules and thresholds change, so confirm current details before you rely on them. This is general information, not financial advice.