Working in Retirement: Motivating Boomers to Stay on the Job
Working past the traditional retirement age can give you essential extra income, provide something productive to do, and offer opportunities to interact with peers. Unsurprisingly, 85 percent of baby boomers plan to work in retirement, primarily for financial reasons, according to a McKinsey & Co. survey.
Work at older ages has some pretty good perks for society, too. If early boomers between the ages of 54 and 63 delayed retirement from age 65 to age 70, the McKinsey analysis found, the share of households prepared for retirement (and not draining public resources) would nearly double from 31 to 60 percent. Plus, working longer would boost economic growth, enabling the economy to generate an extra $12.9 trillion in GDP between now and 2025, McKinsey calculated.
Most workers retire for one of four reasons: retirement becomes affordable, lack of job satisfaction, desire for more personal family time, or due to health problems, according to a new Employee Benefit Research Institute and Mathew Greenwald & Associates online survey released today.
But some companies are stepping up to the plate to try to entice older workers to stay longer. The EBRI survey tested incentives that might have encouraged recent retirees to postpone retirement and found the following likely to be especially persuasive:
| Receiving a full pension while working part time | 50 percent |
| Feeling truly needed for an assignment | 48 percent |
| Health benefits | 46 percent |
| Receiving a partial pension while working part time | 44 percent |
| Guaranteeing pension income already earned | 42 percent |
| Contract or seasonal work | 38 percent |
| Meaningful work | 36 percent |
| Part-time work | 36 percent |
| A pay raise | 33 percent |
| Working from home | 28 percent |
Note: This survey of 4,981 aerospace and defense industry workers who retired in 2003 or later and are currently between the ages of 55 and 65 was made up primarily of male, married engineers, most of whom had benefits that are increasingly becoming rare in the private sector like a traditional pension and retiree medical insurance as well as a 401(k).
Offering educational opportunities to older workers might be another way to make them stay. A recent AARP and Towers Perrin survey found that 77 percent of workers over age 50 are interested in work-related education whether to update current skills and knowledge (90 percent), build new skills to advance their careers (83 percent), or train for an entirely different type of job (57 percent).
Readers, what would motivate you to stay on the job longer?
Tags: retirement | baby boomers
Tools: 
Share
|
| Comments (3) | Print
Reader Comments
"and not draining public resources"
Uh, Emily, I suspect that by now, you have been pretty well indoctrinated in the concept that the money that was involuntarily withheld from everyone's paychecks and called "Social Security" or "FICA" is now "public funds." And I know there is no account set aside for me that contains all those withholdings.
But it galls me to see you imply that I'm doing something wrong or evil by withdrawing Social Security benefits.
They are not "public resources," madam. They are taxpayer's funds that has been confiscated by the Federal Government.
WARE HOUSE
25year ware house I have been worker
Wait until how old?
Obviously the author is not close to the ages she is recommending Boomers work until.
Add your thoughts
Your comment will be posted immediately, unless it is spam or contains profanity. For more information, please see our Comments FAQ.advertisement
