LAT: A New Wrinkle in Workforce (Workers over 75)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-oldworker24feb24,0,4483201,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Dressed in painter's whites, Nick Williams points out his toughest job, a two-story Colonial with shingles that he painstakingly scraped, sanded and painted by hand.

"I was on a 32-foot ladder most of the time," said Williams, eyes twinkling. "But I was only 82 then."

Now 10 years older, Williams is still climbing ladders and painting homes all over Ventura. He labors six days a week, a pace he intends to keep until "more than my knees give out."

Far from settling into retirement, Williams and a growing number of people 75 and older are continuing to work, some because they have to and others, such as Williams, because they want to.

<snip>

Whether outliving retirement savings or facing lower-than-expected investment returns, this population is finding that Social Security isn't enough to cover their bills.

[applegrove]

1. Yes - I know many people who continue (d) to work way into 80 because

they had to (& some just like to work hard). It happens and it will likely increase as Western economies mature slow down themselves.

[Psephos]

2. Very cool. Sitting on your ass after 65 is the short road to the cemetery.

Our bodies are made to go the distance, unless we trash them by not using them, and by feeding them things they were never designed for.

I don't think work in the older years should be necessary, but it should also not be remarkable. Take a look at what older people do in non-Western countries. They stay active, lean, and feel full of purpose nearly to the end.

[lovuian]

3. My grandmother worked till she was 76

and wants to go back!!!

[VegasWolf]

4. Damn, here I am at 55 and retired and I don't miss working one iota! n/t

[shanti]

7. nothing wrong with that!

i plan to be retired by 55 myself, but will start my notary business then.

[daleo]

5. Look at Poppy Bush.

Still committing evil, and he's got to be pushing 90. Plus, there are all the Nixon retreads in the chipministration, that are not only old but most likely undead. The chimp himself is over 100, when his age is converted to people years. They are all engaged in "hard work".

[ixat]

6. It's sort of inevitable, really.

Seeing as how with the stable birth rates populations in western countries start to age, the way to avert a social crisis is either by increasing productivity, or by making retirement age higher than it used to be.

[daleo]

8. To some extent, productivity and population aging are related

For example, Japan was the first country to improve productivity dramatically by the use of robot technology, etc., but they were also the first country to experience population aging (they really didn't have any baby boom to speak of). Since they were facing a slowly growing workforce it made sense to invest in capital instead of labor.

The U.S. and Canada on the other hand had large cohorts coming into the workforce in the 1980's when Japan was the leading nation in the world in adapting technology to production. It made less sense for the U.S. and Canada to adapt this strategy, since they had rapidly expanding workforces - indeed, it would have been socially counter productive, as these cohorts needed to be absorbed into the labor force.

The U.S. and Canada focused more on technology in the 1990's when the cohorts entering the labor force were relatively small.

I guess all I am saying is that nations can and do adapt to phenomena like population aging with a variety of strategies, and there may well be room for further productivity gains as the population structure continues to age, as the trade-off in costs between labor and capital changes. Speculations about retirement age often don't include these considerations.

I cribbed most of this from a talk that I was at by David K. Foot, demographer/economist that I attended recently ("Boom, Bust and Echo" author).