On Your Bookshelf: Encore – Finding Work that Matters in the Second Half of Life
By Andrea Newell (Grand Rapids, MI)
“The first of 77 million baby boomers turned 60 in 2006, and every day, another 8,000 join them.” A large portion of the American workforce is reaching a stage of life where society considers them to be too old to work, yet lengthening lifespans make them too young to retire. They are simultaneously encouraged (or forced) to leave their midlife careers to make way for younger workers, while discouraged from drawing benefits by increasing Social Security age minimums and unable to go without income because of plummeting 401k values. Many take “bridge jobs” – retail positions with Walmart or Home Depot to span the years until they can retire completely. “Joseph Quinn, professor of economics at Boston College, estimates that as many as one-third to one-half of older Americans hold some kind of bridge job before retiring completely. Retirement, he observes, has become ‘a process, not a single event.’”
Marc Freedman, CEO of Civic Ventures, believes that while bridge jobs benefit both employers and employees, they shouldn’t be the only choice for “the largest, healthiest, best-educated population of Americans ever to move through and beyond their fifties.” As the author of Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life, he outlines several compelling arguments for why 50+ knowledge workers should work longer (if they are able) and have an encore career – and how, as a society, we can only reap the benefits of boomers and future generations working longer and happier.
Giving Back, With Life-Experience and Education
Many baby boomers have worked their way up the ladder of success. “The goal now is to be able to stop climbing the ladder and start making a difference, to trade money for meaning, to have the latitude to work on things that matter most.” A 2005 MetLife Foundation/Civic Ventures New Face of Work survey found that boomers and pre-boomers want to do meaningful work, both now and in retirement. Several programs are already in place, including Experience Corps, Troops to Teachers, and IBM’s Transition to Teaching, that repurpose experience for the social sector.
Beverly Ryder was part of the first wave of African-American women to earn an MBA and move into higher-level management positions in the corporate world. After 30 years at Citibank and Edison, she left to become a superintendent in her ailing hometown LA school district. “’Education is the civil rights movement of the 21st century,’ she says, resolutely.”
Many boomers have experience in human resources, marketing, or finance that non-profits and other sectors desperately need. The challenge is transitioning them into the social sector. This includes changing the perception of this age group of prospective employees and offering more programs for preparing for and finding meaningful work.
Additional education is required for some to qualify for their next career, but when that career could span more than a decade, more education can be justified. However, the higher education system needs to adapt to accommodate these students. Community colleges are beginning to play a big role, introducing curricula specifically for workers with previous education and experience. Ryder attended a 10-month program at the Broad Academy to prepare her to become an LA school superintendent.
Maintaining an Active Mind and Healthy Body
Freedman urges us, as a society, to let go of the idea of decades of doing nothing. Marketing slogans in the 1960s and 1970s sold workers on the idea of spending idle years in senior, utopian communities in tropical climates as the goal to aspire to, yet this was never the intent behind the advent of retirement and Social Security. “Social Security was intended to protect those who were frail, dependent, and unable to work, not to set up a significant segment of the population as a permanent leisure class.” For years the mindset has been that working is detrimental to your health and retirement is healthy, but Freedman presents evidence that extended work improves the physical and mental health of people later in life. Engaging your mind, concentrating on social connections, having purpose to life and loving what you do are the real ingredients of the fountain of youth.
At seventy-five, William Safire, New York Times columnist, titled his final column, “Why I’m Outta Here.” Safire had long bided by the advice of James Watson to never retire, “your brain needs exercise or it will atrophy.” But advice from Bruce Barton finally trumped Watson, “When you’re through changing, you’re through.” So Safire left the New York Times to take a full-time job leading the non-profit Dana Foundationand begin a new chapter in his life, and the first controversy he tackled was that of life longevity. “If the body sticks around while the brain wanders off, a longer lifetime becomes a burden on self and society. Extending the life of the body gains most meaning when we preserve the life of the mind.”
An Economic Backbone or a Drain on National Resources?
Freedman opens his book with two views of 2030. In one, the boomers continue along the same path as today – retiring as early as possible and draining our country’s resources. In this vision, “spending on boomers’ pensions and health care has replaced nearly all investments in the nation’s future. Not only children, but the environment and the economy are suffering from these lost opportunities.” In the more optimistic view, boomers leave a virtuous legacy. In this view, encore careers are the norm, and boomers now function as the “backbone of education, health care, nonprofits, the government, and other sectors essential to national well-being.”
Social Security was signed into effect by Franklin Roosevelt in 1935, but at the current rate of consumption, it will be in the red by 2017, on life support by 2030, and declared dead by 2041, having lasted little more than a century. Our nation is already facing an economic and health care crisis. One of Freedman’s futures is only twenty years away. Which one will it be? Researchers at The Urban Institute’s Retirement Project state that “if most individuals work an additional five years – delaying their benefits and continuing to make their payroll contributions and regular income tax payments – the projected 2041 Social Security deficit would more than disappear.”
What does the future hold?
Freedman founded Civic Ventures, a San Francisco think tank on boomers, work and aging, in 1999. In the past decade encore careers is a topic that has surfaced in the media repeatedly. In recent years, it has been covered in such publications as BusinessWeek, Fortune, Kiplinger, and the AARP magazine. Encore is a well-researched, persuasive text that sets forth a solid argument for society to recognize the value of the 50+ workforce, and for the social and private sectors to utilize their knowledge and experience. Changes in health care and education would help smooth the path toward encore careers, and resources like Civic Ventures, Encore Careers, and Experience Corps can help people determine the best encore career for them and give them the support to pursue it. Encore and its subject matter becomes more relevant as each year passes.
