by Dr. Ellen Brandt
We all saw the screaming headlines a few weeks ago: "Contrary to expectations," said the Gallup polling organization, "The Oldest Boomers Are Retiring On Time" (i.e. at age 65).
The headline was based on a telephone poll of about 1400 individuals in the oldest cohort of Baby Boomers, those aged 65-68. (In 2015, the oldest Boomers will turn 69, but the Gallup poll was conducted at the end of 2014.)
In general, as we've said elsewhere, we are skeptical of all telephone-based polls, since they tend to be answered only by those who have a strong - often fanatic - position they wish to state or defend, but are ignored by nearly everybody else. (See http://ellenimpromptu.blogspot.com/2015/01/1000-zealots-versus-sane-majority-why.html )
At least that's true of politically-oriented polls. But I would stake my eye teeth on the probability that the poll in question, about whether or not Boomers are "retiring on time," was not answered - or answered with a great deal of fudging - by many potential respondents, for a whole range of reasons that have nothing to do with politics.
That's because Gallup asked - didn't confirm, just asked - whether the Boomer sample was "still gainfully employed full-time," with follow-up questions about whether they were employed part-time, after the end of full-time employment.
According to Gallup, only about 1/3 of those who chose to respond to their poll, Boomers in the 65-68 age range, said they were working full-time for pay, and that this somehow confirms that, like previous age cohorts, "Boomers are retiring on time."
Oh, yeah, Dear Gallup? Let me propose what you should have asked this little "sample" and what they might have answered you, if you had done so:
Ideal Pollster: Dear Intelligent Boomer, did you leave full-time employment voluntarily, or did your employer force you out of the workforce, perhaps to make room for younger workers clamoring for jobs?
Intelligent Boomer Respondent: You have it exactly right, Ideal Pollster. A whole bunch of us senior and middle managers were essentially told, "leave without a fuss, or we'll trump up an excuse to fire you and jeopardize your - very meager, in my case - pension." My former company has been doing this sort of thing for about 15 years now, and managers over 50 who are able to hold on to their jobs to age 60 or more have been pretty darn lucky.
Ideal Pollster: So you would have liked to remain employed full-time?
Intelligent Boomer: Of course, I would! I'm as healthy as ever, both physically and mentally. My experience level is now sky-high, and I have all the "skill sets" - in finance, computers, marketing, operations - any company might say that they need.
Pollster: But aren't you simply tired of working?
Boomer: No, the opposite. Like most people over 50, my level of knowledge and my creativity quotient have grown stronger, not died on the vine, with every passing year I've worked. I feel I have more gifts than ever to "share with the world," as the old saw goes - and I want to do exactly that.
Pollster: But if that is the case, why have you applied for Medicare and Social Security?
Boomer: Gee, why not? Most people in our age range desperately need every bit of extra cash they can get their hands on. As I said before, I feel I was very lucky, having held on to a full-time job to age 65, as I did. But I have many, many friends from college and graduate school - and I went to great ones - who are literally destitute now, some relying on food stamps and other types of welfare or charity.
Pollster: But how is that possible? Boomers are thought to have amassed so many assets and so much wealth.
Boomer: Amassed it and then lost it, is more like it! Since the massive "financial engineering" of the world economy started, at least as far back as the early 1990s, our Boomer generation has borne the brunt of every major financial dislocation they could throw at us: downsizing, outsourcing, the decimation of middle management, housing crises, market crashes, and the "hollowing out" of both manufacturing and Main Street small business.
Pollster: But aren't some Boomers immensely wealthy?
Boomer: The vaunted "one percent" - more like one percent of one percent, many of us think - is probably a relatively smaller, not larger, group within the Boomer generation than within other generations, like the Gen-Xers. That's because, as we said, Boomers have borne the brunt of the never-ending string of financial crises and dislocations of the past 25-30 years.
Of course, there are some absurdly wealthy Boomers, just as there are absurdly wealthy people in every generation. But note that because Boomers worldwide are, by any standard of measurement, the best-educated generation in world history, before us or after us, we have been more, not less, apt to belong to those groups which have been hardest hit by recent financial cataclysms: homeowners, investors, professionals, middle managers, and small business owners.
Pollster: Don't you think some Boomers are benefiting from the current stock market boom?
Boomer: The already-wealthy ones certainly are. But many of the rest of us were destroyed financially - literally gutted - by the last Great Crash - or the one before that - and have virtually no investments left.
And the same goes for the so-called housing recovery. A large percentage of the Boomers I know have been so pressed for cash, they've had trouble paying for necessary repairs and maintenance, both on their personal real estate - where they live - and their business real estate, like small professional office buildings or retail outlets. If they are forced to sell out now, they'll undoubtedly do so at a loss, not a gain.
In fact, drive around my - or any other - neighborhood with a large percentage of Boomer inhabitants, and you'll view a still very depressed-looking environment, with myriad "For Sale" signs and shuttered restaurants and shops.
Pollster: Getting back to your personal situation, do you expect to seek full-time or part-time employment now, or what will you do with your time?
Boomer: Pretty much every Boomer I know who has left the paid full-time workforce is trying her/his best to patch together some sort of ongoing career, to avoid falling off the proverbial financial cliff.
Many of the "part-time" jobs available are, frankly, not suitable for us - sometimes downright degrading. Boomers who have Ph.D's or law degrees or engineering degrees or who have run large departments or business units are now supposed to work gratefully as retail clerks or busboys or babysitters or . . . . who knows what else? while newly-graduated 22-year-olds are paid large salaries for "coding" and "gaming" jobs?
For one thing, many well-educated Boomers could easily do those "coding" and "gaming" jobs or very quickly be taught how to do them. The Propaganda that Boomers - and for that matter, the many people older than Boomers - are technologically deficient dinosaurs is just that - pure Propaganda. Most college-educated Boomers - and many who were not college-educated - have used computers and been comfortable with all kinds of technology since we were teenagers.
All of the current political talk about training groups like ex-gang members and ex-prisoners and illegal immigrants and every other "disadvantaged" group you can think of - provided, of course, that they are very young - to "code" and "design apps" truly grates on the very souls of most financially-struggling Boomers. It is not only grossly unfair towards us, it is hardly the way to create the best possible cohort of new "coders."
For goodness sake! train some of our generation - at least its under-employed A and A+ intellects - to do these jobs and any other new jobs which require intelligence, sophistication, and creativity - which we Boomers collectively possess in spades.
And frankly, one specific kind of job the developed world has simply given away the past 30 years might truly appeal to us Boomers, if such jobs were "repatriated" now.
I am talking, of course, of IT Help Desk jobs and other jobs related to Internet site assistance. People in our 50s and 60s and beyond have many skills that would make us superb Help Desk employees, as opposed to the mostly very young folk in far-off lands who do them now:
First of all, many of us have used computers for 30 or 40 years and various individual social media, on-line publications, and retail sites as long as they've existed. Second, we're good at research, which is what finding the answers to each and every consumer question takes. Third, we're articulate. Fourth, we're polite. And Fifth, we're patient. Many current holders of Help Desk jobs are inarticulate, impolite, impatient - and overall, such a pain in the neck, a lot of consumers have given up trying to deal with them.
Pollster: Or maybe you could do polling jobs . . . .
Boomer: Wow! You know, we could. You wouldn't happen to be hiring?
Ellen Brandt, Ph.D. is Founder of the Bring Back the Meritocracy! project, an ambitious and broad-ranging non-profit, non-partisan, non-controversial effort to help the "Highly-Educated But Under-Employed" in the U.S. and abroad. Read about it at:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/114091094386273464410/114091094386273464410/about/p/pub
