Boomers Working Beyond Age 65

About

Subscribe to my Podcast

Syndicate So Baby Boomer

Boomer Links

Advertising

Privacy Policy
We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. For example, Google, as a third party vendor, uses a DART cookie to serve ads on this site based upon your visit to our sites and other sites on the Internet. You may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting Google ad and content network privacy policy at: www.google.com/privacy_ads.html. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, please contact the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) at (207) 467-3500 or www.networkadvertising.org.

« What's the Downside of Being Safe | Main | Blogging Boomer Carnival #235 »

Boomers Working Beyond Age 65

Dr. B. Boomer — an unfortunate, but fictional, dentist — worked and saved for years, only to see her portfolio shrivel after a series of investments in orthodontia-related dot-coms a decade ago. She then put her money into seemingly safe financial firms, like A.I.G., and was hammered during the subsequent downturn. Her plan to retire by selling her Scottsdale McMansion isn’t going well either. So the poor woman is spending her 65th year, not in glorious retirement, but fixing fillings for screaming children and generally annoyed adults.

Dr. Boomer is hardly alone. Retirement seems out of the question for increasing numbers of Americans who are saddled with debt and whose savings evaporated during the recent bust. Today’s workers should expect to labor longer, and companies should expect to employ more older workers.

The numbers supply a vivid picture of America’s graying work force. Between 2007 and 2010, the number of working Americans over 65 years old jumped 16 percent; the number of under-65’s in the labor force shrank. The trend started before the current downturn: the number of Americans over 65 in the labor force increased from 10.8 percent in 1985 to 12.1 percent in 1995 to 15.1 percent in 2005 to 17.4 percent in 2010. Until 2001, most workers age 65 and older had part-time jobs; since 2001, full-time work has been far more common.

Consider the difference between today’s extended work life and the average American work life during the mid-20th century in the midst of what was, in retrospect, a retirement boom. Again, the numbers present a vivid picture: from the ’40s to the ’80s, the percentage of men who were 65 and older in the labor force fell precipitously — from 47 percent in 1949 to 15.6 percent in 1993. By the 1980s, retirement at age 65 was nearly universal for American workers.

Source: The New York Times, November 20, 2011

A new ebook, Boomer Retirement Life Tips, explores their personal strategy and saving for retirement to where they will retire, how to handle aging parents and adult children, to health and wellness tips for aging like fine wine and deciding on a phased retirement or encore career.