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Changing Attitudes of Older Workers
Bob Weinstein is a journalist who covers technology, project management, the workplace and career development.
Barely two decades ago, workers over age 50 were considered over the hill by most employers--although most were reluctant to admit it. Many fast-trackers in their 30s still cling to traditional thinking about older workers losing their edge, and age bias is not likely to disappear. Yet new evidence and a growing population of baby boomers still in the workforce beyond retirement age are disproving tired myths about older workers.
The post-World War ll fantasy was retirement at 62. That was based on the notion that your prime working years ended somewhere in your 50s. Not only has that myth been blown to smithereens, but the reality is that few people can afford to retire at age 62--or even 70. In 1992, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 22.8 percent of the nation’s 87.4 million people with full-time jobs spend 49 or more hours a week on the job. A decade earlier, only 17.7 percent worked that much.
In The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, Juliet B. Schor--an associate professor of economics at Harvard University--pointed out that the myth of the four-day work week projected by economists in the ‘50s is far from the truth. Americans work harder and longer than ever before. Economists thought economic progress surely would result in a better lifestyle and early retirement for most Americans. Not so--a growing …
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