For all his knowledge, Wallfesh found unemployment a profound culture shock. He didn’t shave for six days. At cocktail parties, people would ask how he spent his time: “Depending on how flippant I felt, I’d say, ‘I pull the wings off butterflies’.” And as much as he hated commuting from his home in Stamford, Conn., to New York City, he found that he missed the train ride- “It was like living in Elba,” he says. So, after a mourning period, Wallfesh began following the advice he’d given his clients. He assessed what he really liked to do, listed what he’d never do again and created a new job for himself He still advises corporations, writes articles and gives speeches on all aspects of retirement through his own fledgling firm, Whale Communications. Only now he works at home in T shirts and starts most of his talks “And then it happened to me. . . "
Whether they have been laid off, structured out or enticed by early-retirement packages, tens of thousands of Americans are in similar straits these days. U.S. companies have eliminated more than 5 million jobs since the early 1980s, according to Dan Lacey of Workplace Trends newsletter, most of them held by middle-aged and older people. “American corporations are trashing a generation,” says Lacey. The pain is all the more acute because many middle-aged workers assumed they would stay with the same company until they were 65, then retire and enjoy a comfortable pension to the grave. “These people do a quick calculation and realize they’re probably going to live to be 85,” says Bill Stanley of King Chapman Broussard & Gallagher, a New York consulting firm. “They say, ‘What am I going to do for the next 30 years and how am I going to pay for it?’”
While much research has been done on what happens to corporations after such downsizings, there are scant statistics on what happens to the people. Very few companies even keep track of their own former employees. (“There’s a sort of corporate conservatism that says, ‘If we don’t find out, we won’t have to do anything about it and we won’t have to tell anybody,” says Thomas Blank of the University of Connecticut’s School of Family Studies.) Even those who opt for early-retirement bonuses find that the money doesn’t stretch very far–particularly if they are still years away from qualifying for social security and Medicare. Falling interest rates are eroding the value of lump-sum payments. Plunging real-estate prices make it harder to sell the family home. And fewer corporations offer retiree-health benefits as part of the deal. “These people may still have children in school and mortgage payments,” says Joanne Daubner, a senior training consultant for The Wyatt Co. in Chicago. “But they think, ‘If I don’t take this incentive, I may be out in an involuntary layoff.’ It’s kind of like Russian roulette.”
Demographic changes are complicating retirement decisions too. Surveys have found that nearly one third of people approaching retirement age today have responsibility for an aging parent or parent-in-law. Grown, unemployed children are returning to the nest. And many male retirees have wives in the work force-may-be just hitting their professional strides. “Should she stop working just because he does? That’s a real question I’ve been asked-usually out in the parking lot after I’ve made a speech,” says Wallfesh. The hardest adjustments may be psychological, he says: “If your whole identity is being chief chemist or factory manager for a major company, you’re stripped of that when you retire. It’s the nudist colony out there.”
Some people, of course, are delighted to stop working. But those who need or want to stay in the work world often find the realities of the job market depressing. For all the stories about coming labor shortages and companies seeking older workers, most experts don’t see that happening on a large scale yet. And age discrimination regularly rears its graying head. Yet professional outplacement counselors say it is possible for people to find work after 50-particularly if they are willing to relocate, take a pay cut or work for a smaller company. “I don’t think there’s an organization in America that won’t hire somebody if they think that person will help the bottom line,” says Michael D. Adler, former national partner in charge of human resources at Ernst & Young who was structured out himself and now works finding jobs for other former executives of the firm. Some of the strategies he and others suggest to fiftysomething job seekers:
Don’t try to clone your old position: the jobs being cut at your firm may be closing down at others too. But your expertise may be transferable to businesses that are growing. “There are a lot of bank vice presidents floating around today,” says Helen Axel, a senior research fellow at The Conference Board. “Could you be a financial officer to a smaller company that doesn’t have one, or sell your services part time to a number of small businesses?” Blue-collar workers may be even better poised to take advantage of opportunities in the service industry. “If you have a technical skill repairing aircraft engines, you can turn it into repairing car or truck engines,” says outplacement counselor Catherine O’Neill, who works with employees leaving Pratt & Whitney.
James E. Challenger, president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas in Chicago, says he has no trouble placing clients older than 50-particularly if they can perform more than one task. “A company may only need a production-control supervisor on Mondays, but they need someone to do quality control the rest of the week, " he says. “This is a whole new way of thinking about employment.” But part-time and contingency work is growing–especially in smaller firms.
Opportunities for job training abound, from community colleges to union programs. Retraining courses offered by the United Auto Workers have channeled former General Motors, Ford and Chrysler employees into fields such as carpentry, medical technology, refrigeration and cooling-system repair. The New York City Department for the Aging, in partnership with IBM, is offering computer courses for people 55 and older. The first 20 graduated in February and 11 have already found jobs-including 70-year-old Frances Emerson, who took early retirement from her job as an assistant controller for Sears 12 years ago. After learning WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3, she landed a full-time job as a receptionist and typist at an insurance company. “If you have that skill, it opens the doors for you,” she says.
Forming your own small business can bring freedom and satisfaction. “It doesn’t have to require a huge investment-maybe only a home computer and a fax, " says Axel. A good market sense helps. Irv Goldberg, a 55-year-old former sales manager, cashed in on the booming science of office environments and started a new company, SBTB Ergonomics, marketing footrests, backrests and keyboard wrist protectors. Goldberg recruited other early retirees to buy sales territories-nine have signed up to date. “They don’t have to prove themselves to me-Im looking for them. The older the better,” he says.
Adler says many of his clients are “confirmed workaholics.” But before he sends them out on interviews, he asks them to decide if they really want to stay on the fast track. “A lot of them realize, ‘Hey, I was important. I impressed my mother. I don’t have to do that anymore’,” Adler says. “Deep down, some of them are relieved.” With some pension money coming in, many retirees are free to pursue their avocations as new careers. The early-retirement bonus former GM assembly-line worker Bob Boggs took last year brought his monthly pension to $1,400. Now 60, he travels around metro Detroit playing guitar with his country band-a combination that has made retirement “just plain great,” he says.
Other well-off but restless retirees find satisfaction in volunteer work. At loose ends after selling a company he founded, Bill McCandless helped form Reachout ‘56, a Princeton alumni project that channels class members into public-service work as their professional careers wind down. McCandless, 58, mentors second graders in a Trenton, N.J., school; other Reachout members transport inner-city kids to museums or coach sandlot sports. McCandless says that for many former executives, retirement offers the first opportunity to pay attention to the world around them: “We rode oak-paneled trains into walnut-paneled offices. We never see the ironbound sections until they crumble around us.”
Far from the world of corporations and assembly lines, many older people have found fascinating niches in the job market, according to Caroline Bird in her new book, “Second Careers: New Ways to Work After 50.” The author, now 76, persuaded AARP’s Modern Maturity magazine to print a questionnaire on second careers in its April 1988 issue-and an astounding 36,000 people 50 and older responded, describing a range of jobs so broad they defied conventional categories. A retired lawyer now works as a commercial salmon fisherman. A former “girl Friday” grooms dogs professionally. Bird concedes that many of the jobs they found were dead-end, small-scale and off the organizational charts. But she says these “bad new jobs” are ideally suited to older people who want flexibility and maybe just a little income-and they will be models for younger workers as the American work force changes. “People have to get it out of their heads that they will have a good, steady job for life,” Bird says. “IBM is breaking up into more parts than the Soviet Union.”
Like the former Soviet republics, this issue is not about to go away. People are retiring earlier, and living longer, and wondering what to do with the rest of their lives. As Hank Wallfesh found, “It can be great out there-and it can be shitty out there.” Sort of like life before 50.
title: “Finding Work After 50” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-10” author: “Todd Thayer”
For all his knowledge, Wallfesh found unemployment a profound culture shock. He didn’t shave for six days. At cocktail parties, people would ask how he spent his time: “Depending on how flippant I felt, I’d say, ‘I pull the wings off butterflies’.” And as much as he hated commuting from his home in Stamford, Conn., to New York City, he found that he missed the train ride- “It was like living in Elba,” he says. So, after a mourning period, Wallfesh began following the advice he’d given his clients. He assessed what he really liked to do, listed what he’d never do again and created a new job for himself He still advises corporations, writes articles and gives speeches on all aspects of retirement through his own fledgling firm, Whale Communications. Only now he works at home in T shirts and starts most of his talks “And then it happened to me. . . "
Whether they have been laid off, structured out or enticed by early-retirement packages, tens of thousands of Americans are in similar straits these days. U.S. companies have eliminated more than 5 million jobs since the early 1980s, according to Dan Lacey of Workplace Trends newsletter, most of them held by middle-aged and older people. “American corporations are trashing a generation,” says Lacey. The pain is all the more acute because many middle-aged workers assumed they would stay with the same company until they were 65, then retire and enjoy a comfortable pension to the grave. “These people do a quick calculation and realize they’re probably going to live to be 85,” says Bill Stanley of King Chapman Broussard & Gallagher, a New York consulting firm. “They say, ‘What am I going to do for the next 30 years and how am I going to pay for it?’”
While much research has been done on what happens to corporations after such downsizings, there are scant statistics on what happens to the people. Very few companies even keep track of their own former employees. (“There’s a sort of corporate conservatism that says, ‘If we don’t find out, we won’t have to do anything about it and we won’t have to tell anybody,” says Thomas Blank of the University of Connecticut’s School of Family Studies.) Even those who opt for early-retirement bonuses find that the money doesn’t stretch very far–particularly if they are still years away from qualifying for social security and Medicare. Falling interest rates are eroding the value of lump-sum payments. Plunging real-estate prices make it harder to sell the family home. And fewer corporations offer retiree-health benefits as part of the deal. “These people may still have children in school and mortgage payments,” says Joanne Daubner, a senior training consultant for The Wyatt Co. in Chicago. “But they think, ‘If I don’t take this incentive, I may be out in an involuntary layoff.’ It’s kind of like Russian roulette.”
Demographic changes are complicating retirement decisions too. Surveys have found that nearly one third of people approaching retirement age today have responsibility for an aging parent or parent-in-law. Grown, unemployed children are returning to the nest. And many male retirees have wives in the work force-may-be just hitting their professional strides. “Should she stop working just because he does? That’s a real question I’ve been asked-usually out in the parking lot after I’ve made a speech,” says Wallfesh. The hardest adjustments may be psychological, he says: “If your whole identity is being chief chemist or factory manager for a major company, you’re stripped of that when you retire. It’s the nudist colony out there.”
Some people, of course, are delighted to stop working. But those who need or want to stay in the work world often find the realities of the job market depressing. For all the stories about coming labor shortages and companies seeking older workers, most experts don’t see that happening on a large scale yet. And age discrimination regularly rears its graying head. Yet professional outplacement counselors say it is possible for people to find work after 50-particularly if they are willing to relocate, take a pay cut or work for a smaller company. “I don’t think there’s an organization in America that won’t hire somebody if they think that person will help the bottom line,” says Michael D. Adler, former national partner in charge of human resources at Ernst & Young who was structured out himself and now works finding jobs for other former executives of the firm. Some of the strategies he and others suggest to fiftysomething job seekers:
Don’t try to clone your old position: the jobs being cut at your firm may be closing down at others too. But your expertise may be transferable to businesses that are growing. “There are a lot of bank vice presidents floating around today,” says Helen Axel, a senior research fellow at The Conference Board. “Could you be a financial officer to a smaller company that doesn’t have one, or sell your services part time to a number of small businesses?” Blue-collar workers may be even better poised to take advantage of opportunities in the service industry. “If you have a technical skill repairing aircraft engines, you can turn it into repairing car or truck engines,” says outplacement counselor Catherine O’Neill, who works with employees leaving Pratt & Whitney.
James E. Challenger, president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas in Chicago, says he has no trouble placing clients older than 50-particularly if they can perform more than one task. “A company may only need a production-control supervisor on Mondays, but they need someone to do quality control the rest of the week, " he says. “This is a whole new way of thinking about employment.” But part-time and contingency work is growing–especially in smaller firms.
Opportunities for job training abound, from community colleges to union programs. Retraining courses offered by the United Auto Workers have channeled former General Motors, Ford and Chrysler employees into fields such as carpentry, medical technology, refrigeration and cooling-system repair. The New York City Department for the Aging, in partnership with IBM, is offering computer courses for people 55 and older. The first 20 graduated in February and 11 have already found jobs-including 70-year-old Frances Emerson, who took early retirement from her job as an assistant controller for Sears 12 years ago. After learning WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3, she landed a full-time job as a receptionist and typist at an insurance company. “If you have that skill, it opens the doors for you,” she says.
Forming your own small business can bring freedom and satisfaction. “It doesn’t have to require a huge investment-maybe only a home computer and a fax, " says Axel. A good market sense helps. Irv Goldberg, a 55-year-old former sales manager, cashed in on the booming science of office environments and started a new company, SBTB Ergonomics, marketing footrests, backrests and keyboard wrist protectors. Goldberg recruited other early retirees to buy sales territories-nine have signed up to date. “They don’t have to prove themselves to me-Im looking for them. The older the better,” he says.
Adler says many of his clients are “confirmed workaholics.” But before he sends them out on interviews, he asks them to decide if they really want to stay on the fast track. “A lot of them realize, ‘Hey, I was important. I impressed my mother. I don’t have to do that anymore’,” Adler says. “Deep down, some of them are relieved.” With some pension money coming in, many retirees are free to pursue their avocations as new careers. The early-retirement bonus former GM assembly-line worker Bob Boggs took last year brought his monthly pension to $1,400. Now 60, he travels around metro Detroit playing guitar with his country band-a combination that has made retirement “just plain great,” he says.
Other well-off but restless retirees find satisfaction in volunteer work. At loose ends after selling a company he founded, Bill McCandless helped form Reachout ‘56, a Princeton alumni project that channels class members into public-service work as their professional careers wind down. McCandless, 58, mentors second graders in a Trenton, N.J., school; other Reachout members transport inner-city kids to museums or coach sandlot sports. McCandless says that for many former executives, retirement offers the first opportunity to pay attention to the world around them: “We rode oak-paneled trains into walnut-paneled offices. We never see the ironbound sections until they crumble around us.”
Far from the world of corporations and assembly lines, many older people have found fascinating niches in the job market, according to Caroline Bird in her new book, “Second Careers: New Ways to Work After 50.” The author, now 76, persuaded AARP’s Modern Maturity magazine to print a questionnaire on second careers in its April 1988 issue-and an astounding 36,000 people 50 and older responded, describing a range of jobs so broad they defied conventional categories. A retired lawyer now works as a commercial salmon fisherman. A former “girl Friday” grooms dogs professionally. Bird concedes that many of the jobs they found were dead-end, small-scale and off the organizational charts. But she says these “bad new jobs” are ideally suited to older people who want flexibility and maybe just a little income-and they will be models for younger workers as the American work force changes. “People have to get it out of their heads that they will have a good, steady job for life,” Bird says. “IBM is breaking up into more parts than the Soviet Union.”
Like the former Soviet republics, this issue is not about to go away. People are retiring earlier, and living longer, and wondering what to do with the rest of their lives. As Hank Wallfesh found, “It can be great out there-and it can be shitty out there.” Sort of like life before 50.
