"Employers are learning from experience that most if not all of the long-held common perceptions about older workers simply are not true," said John Challenger, chief executive of the Challenger, Gray & Christmas outplacement firm in Chicago.
"For example, the greatest misperception about older workers was that the diminishing health that accompanies aging would be too costly in terms of increased absenteeism and high health insurance costs."
Excellent point, Mr. Challenger.
But let's look beyond the numbers for a month. There are other reasons more older people are working today.
Consider downsizings:
You no longer have to have weak performance to lose your job. In today's environment, talented and motivated workers lose their jobs along with everyone else.
Consider pensions:
There is a safety net known as the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which steps in when private pensions are insolvent. PBGC currently covers 29,000 private pension plans, and a year ago said its assets were $23 billion short of handling its future obligations - a figure that grows monthly.
It is estimated that private pensions today are $450 billion underfunded. That means there is a huge liability that PBGC might eventually have to handle. The federal government is taking steps to shore up PBGC, but the troubled pension plans might outrace lawmakers.
Consider health insurance:
The number of Americans without health insurance is rising. In 2005, there were 40 million Americans without insurance, up from 28 million in 2001, according to the Commonwealth Fund, a health care policy foundation based in New York.
Everyone knows that if you don't have health insurance and have a serious illness, the cost can wreck you financially. People stay in the work force longer these days because it is so expensive to get health insurance on their own. For better or worse, most American health care is provided through employers, which means people need jobs more than in the past.
And, there are other economic reasons that are keeping older workers in the job market today.
Challenger reports that one in four 65-year-olds were employed in 1948, a figure that declined to about one in 10 in the mid-1980s. But that percentage has been rising steadily since then and it might not be long until it is back at one in four.
Let's see. In 1948, people worked later in life because most didn't have sound or adequate pensions. By the mid-1980s, retirement at an early age was possible because most people had worked for decades with pension coverage, the economy was volatile and health insurance was easier to come by.
Yet, as downsizings increased, pension plans became insolvent and the costs of health care soared, more people seem to be working longer today, some well into their retirement years.
The numbers tell a story, but they just don't tell the whole story.
© Copley News Service
