What do older workers bring employers?
Carstensen: If I were starting a company today, I would like a lot of young people in my workforce. They are optimistic and open, willing to work hard and are fast learners. But they are also as a group less emotionally stable than older workers. Older workers tend to have more emotional balance, they care about meaning and mentoring younger people. There’s actually a lot of evidence that productivity goes up with age. So I would want a mixture of both.
Older workers can help set new norms about work, about life, about family, that we’re going to all benefit from. Once employers recognize the value of older workers, they will offer more flexible options–and because they can’t offer them to just one group of workers, everyone will take advantage. This could be the best thing to ever happen to parents of young children, giving them more flexibility.
What’s your advice to someone 50 or 60 years old today?
Carstensen: If you haven’t saved, you are going to be working longer. And you should delay taking Social Security until you can get the maximum benefit. But if you hate your job, don’t keep doing that job. Find something different. There’s still time to gain new skills, go in different directions. Find something that’s satisfying. Part of the reason to work longer is financial, but the more we learn about work and engagement, the more we see that it benefits cognitive functioning and physical health.
What sort of help would you like to see from the financial services industry?
Carstensen: Financial advisors are on the front lines in talking to people about their goals. They are a critical starting point for changing the conversation, pointing out new interesting things that people might try to do or want to do. Get away from this idea that you’ve got to save, save, save and you can never get enough for retirement and instead begin to have people save in ways that will afford them more flexibility throughout their lives. That’ll be more inspiring to people.
We are talking about a lot of change to education, work, savings patterns and retirement.
Carstensen: Change happens in a lot of different ways. Sometimes, it does happen very slowly. Then there are other times where change happens seemingly overnight. Think about recycling. If you told me twenty years ago we were going to have people separate their trash into different containers, I would have just laughed. Now, it’s the norm. So things are going to change. What makes it urgent that we need for these changes to happen right now, not gradually over decades. We have this very large cohort of people who are going to move through middle age into old age and they’re going to set new norms. If they can set new, open, positive norms about work, about life, about family, we’re going to all benefit.
Chip Castille, Managing Director, is BlackRock’s Chief Retirement Strategist heading the Global Retirement Strategy Group.