Chapter 7 working life

retired old man There are only a few figures that are beyond doubt in the personal lives of American citizens.You can vote (and be drafted) at 18; you can drink at 21; you can be president at 35; you can retire at 65. But the last number - are Americans really going to retire at 65?With so many healthy Americans living to 85, who wants to retire at 65?Today, there are 5 million workers 65 or older in the U.S. workforce, nearly double the number in the early 1980s, and the number is ballooning. Some people work past 65 because they have to: Medicare costs are rising, and Social Security payments—an average of $1,000 a month—are not enough to cover their costs.But the bigger reason for working as we get older is the fact that Americans love work — not only do we keep living, we keep working, and we’re not doing enough.My friend and advisor, Harold Burson, co-founder of the global human resources firm Burson Marsteller (of which I am CEO), will soon I'm 86 years old, but I still come to work every day, and I still have some ideas from time to time.

On average, Americans work more than 1,800 hours a year, arguably more than most workers in the rest of the world.Although we take less vacation time per year than workers in other western countries (28 days in the UK, 37 days in France, and 13 days in our country), we still don't take at least half of the short vacation days.In fact, for us, the days when we go out without our Black-Berrys are vacations.In 2006, almost a quarter of us (23%) checked work-related emails and messages when we were away from work – up from just 17% in 2005.Many of us love to work. In fact, the urge to work is such a fundamental human urge that the fourth of the Ten Commandments of Moses (the third for Catholicism) requires one day off a week, which is a day off from work.Other precepts include not to murder, not to commit adultery, and not to steal.We tend to think that most people want to go home early—waiting all week for that Friday afternoon, so when the time comes, they drop work and leave the company.Indeed, in the past, many jobs were scary—even life-threatening—and, logically, people couldn't just quit their jobs and wait to go home.But when jobs became entirely administrative, consulting, and software-based—and jobs in manufacturing were dwindling—many people changed their attitudes toward work, and the number of workaholics rocketed like a rocket. on the rise.Haven't you heard that old saying many times? "No one wants to die in an office", but many people are doing it now.A generation that grew up on sandwiches is taken aback when they call their 70-year-old parents who work in the office and find out they are too busy to babysit their grandchildren.

Americans generally love to work, but the reality is that the baby boomer generation is now approaching 65, and it's clear that the traditional notion of "retirement"—wearing a gold watch, sitting in an easy chair, learning to type Golf - just for the retired. Baby boomers, rejuvenated by the economic success of the 1960s and 1980s, didn't want to follow someone else's formula for their old age.According to a 2005 survey by Merrill Lynch, three in four baby boomers said they didn't want to live that traditional retirement.Instead, they look forward, looking into the future more than 20 years in the future (Social Security was established in 1935, when a 65-year-old could only see 13 years ahead)—and, they say, they still To look forward, to see a farther future.Some want to keep paying their health insurance premiums, or have enough money to cover them for longer — but more baby boomers surveyed say they keep working to keep To be healthy and happy is to continue to communicate with people.

Modernization of the working environment has made these aspirations possible.Older people who have suffered injuries may not be at an advantage at a time when more jobs are physically demanding.But in the information age, the old guys have more information than everyone else.In any case, drugs like Celebrex allow millions of Americans to keep working despite their injuries.And if older workers end up physically injured, they can get better treatment from the company under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Retired and working seniors are a very important thing for the United States.In sheer numbers, they are a larger workforce than anyone imagined.More than 2 million Americans turn 65 each year.If only half of them decide to keep working, more than a million people—nearly 1% of the current workforce—enter the labor force who were not expected to.

This situation also has some important implications.First, it crowds out opportunities for younger employees who have been waiting for their turn to head the job.If people suddenly became managers or vice presidents at 40 instead of 35, would they want to stay in the company and wait?If they are willing to stay in the company and wait, isn't that creating more passive leaders? — because the more enterprising potential leaders break free and start their own businesses. For some industries, it has even greater significance.Low-income older workers tend to work odd jobs, often on a part-time basis; higher-paid older employees, whether in their familiar field or in a hobby they enjoy, tend to be consultants or independent contractor.And they prefer to do things on their own terms, so older employees make up 7 percent of independent contractors compared to 2.5 percent in traditional arrangements.But in either case, it's relatively easy for HR departments at Home Depot and CVS, as well as many tech fields, to place such seniors in this kind of work.

But in all industries, employers need to adjust.Research by Merrill Lynch found that few companies focus on older workers, prioritizing younger, healthier workers because it reduces benefit costs.But when crafting a benefit package, it's important to consider priority benefits like maternity and parental leave for younger workers, as well as "winter break" and prescription drug coverage for older workers.Just as the women's movement faces new choices—whether to go out to work part-time or stay at home—so the elderly face new choices between traditional jobs and other non-traditional jobs.

I don't appreciate those golf club promoters, nor those who design golf courses - the idea of ​​having retired people walking around these courses all day may not serve their purpose, and these clubs and courses may appear excess.At the same time, commercial centers may become the busiest places to serve retirees.We look forward to the emergence of more and more markets dedicated to the elderly, equipping them with computers, cell phones and other mobile devices tailored to their use, as well as a wide range of reading glasses for reading books and newspapers. Older people who work after retirement also have an impact on the political outlook.Elderly citizens have the right to vote, and when retired working men and women bring home their paychecks, they retain some kind of interest in the economy.Older voters have always been valuable voters -- especially grumpy old men.Keeping them in work might make them cast their votes more based on what's better for jobs and the economy than on some cultural issue.

In addition, new legislation and jurisprudence are needed, in particular new age discrimination laws.It has been illegal to force a person to retire before the age of 70 since 1978, and no forced retirement has occurred since 1986.But judging from the current situation, by the age of 70, if you want to continue your social security, you have no other advantage.Why not over 73? Is there anything to be done about ageism that doesn't show up on the surface?Will older employees be forgiven if they spend a little longer on the same job than younger employees?When everyone is competing for an office position on YouTube — like a basketball game where everyone is fighting for a ball — does this environment become an “ager-hostile environment”?

It is not difficult to imagine the business significance of the elderly who retire and work.For the most part, producers of "premium" products focus on golf club members and regular walkers.How can an office chair accommodate elderly people with arthritis, back pain, and knee surgery?For those old people who go to work at 7 in the morning but have to take a nap between 2 and 2:30 in the afternoon, do they need to prepare equipment that is more suitable for naps?Should every workplace have a defibrillator in the hallway?Do you have sodium-free options on your office coffee table? Retired and working seniors also have a great impact on family life.It's unclear how wives react when men suddenly choose to work instead of enjoying their prime time with them. (Is it looking down on them? Or is it a great relief?) What does it mean to the grown-up children?They can no longer count on their parents to babysit their children because their parents are working as hard as they are - a sign that the childcare industry is set to grow a lot.

In addition, there are implications for public health.Adding more than a million workers a year means more congestion on public transport on the road.Seven percent of all crashes involved drivers 65 or older; 10 percent of all fatal crashes involved drivers 65 or older. But the really important social implications of retired working seniors is that fundamentally everything we've predicted in the past 10 years, like Social Security, has been wrong.In fact, each worker does not feed 10 retirees, because the retirees are also working.Take the huge burden of Social Security that we've been raving about, to the extent that it just takes a few extra years of work to solve it -- and to a large extent, not all of it. Everyone works extra years, but only those who are willing to do so are allowed to work extra years.If everyone worked just one year beyond their expected retirement age, we could completely offset Social Security The expected shortfall between seniors' benefits and taxes.If everyone worked 5 extra years, the additional tax payments to the government alone would greatly outweigh this shortfall.

Besides these, is there a greater meaning? And of course, maybe, the elderly who retire and work can also prolong the actual life expectancy.Numerous studies have proven that an active body and mind are the keys to a healthy life.Will we know more about how to extend life?Instead of adopting a whole new diet and exercise program, and waking up the alarm clock after 65, who among us is going to live to 100 more and more? Perhaps retirement and work can save families—a claim that may at first sound hard to swallow for spouses who flatly refuse to retire and for grown-up children who agonize over it .If one could actually work until 90, that might have a whole new pressure relief valve in the work-family dilemma.Now that moms (or dads) are mainly raising their kids between the ages of 23 and 43, will they be able to work another 50 years after that?The results of surveys of current college freshmen tell us that their top priorities in life are making a lot of money and supporting their families.If the "working life" is suddenly 20 years longer than in the past, can they - after a lot of trouble - really realize these two wishes? What was once a golden age is now a golden opportunity in the minds of aging Americans.Yes, this development will lead to more traffic accidents, and will make the younger generation rush to start their own businesses - but think about it, it can also avoid the social security crisis looming in the United States, and it can save American families . people who work too far In the United States, I am afraid that everyone has the experience of commuting to and from get off work.150 million of us work, and only 3% of them work from home.There are so many people - about 145 million people - who have to leave their homes every morning to go to work and return home in the evening. A few years ago, there were studies reporting that people could not tolerate a commute longer than 45 minutes.OK, let's break it down: we're averaging 25 minutes now, an improvement of almost 20% over 1980.According to a 2005 BusinessWeek report, only 24 percent of all workers left their hometowns for work in 1990.Now, 50% of new workers do this. The distance between jobs and home has widened as jobs have moved out of urban areas, into the suburbs, and later into the “outskirts.”So people first went to work in the city, then went to work in the suburbs, and then went to work in the outer suburbs. It was like a race between workers and jobs to see who could run the farthest.More and more people are paying to get to work, so that in 2000 almost 10 million Americans took more than an hour to get to work — up from fewer than 7 million a decade earlier. In the spring of 2006, commuting too far became so commonplace that Midas Muffler held a race to reward the longest commute.The event drew thousands of people, and Midas presented the award to David Givens of Mariposa, California, who commutes daily. 372 miles to work at Cisco Systems in San Jose. (Leaves home at 4:30 every morning, stops for coffee, arrives at his Cisco office at 7:45. Returns at 5:00 pm, arrives home around 8:30.) Who are the 3.4 million people who commute too far?Why do they have to go to work so far from home? For most people, people who live too far away cannot afford to live in a house near the company.The price of a new home has nearly tripled since the mid-1980s and now averages around $300,000.Between 2002 and 2003, according to Census Bureau data, the state with the largest increase in commute time was West Virginia (West Virginia, where housing prices are still affordable), but in Washington, DC (Washington, DC), Pennsylvania In Pennsylvania and Ohio, more lucrative jobs lured workers out of their 9-to-5, starting in the morning 4:30 to 8:30 p.m. Others commute too far to improve their quality of life.When prices fall, the farther away the land from the city falls, the more people decide to suffer too far to commute in exchange for a bigger house, a bigger lawn, a little less traffic, a little less crime .Not to mention, doing so can be close to nature.Roughly 25,000 people drive hours a day from Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains to commute to New York City -- but on weekends they can hike, ski and enjoy the clean mountain air close to home . Some couples who both work to earn money become people who work too far, not for financial or lifestyle reasons, but for logical reasons.With the increase in households where both husband and wife work, the chances that one or both will need to travel long distances to work also increase.Princeton and New Jersey, known for their universities, have also become popular suburbs for couples who split their time between New York and Philadelphia. Indeed, the worst places in the country for commuting to get off work are New York and Washington, D.C., where the average commute takes 34 and 33 minutes, respectively.It's the fact that commuting takes so long, plus expensive gas, is what's driving people back to mass transit. But there are still more than 3 million people—that's exactly the magic 1% that makes up the microtrend—who wake up with the stars and go to work across state lines and even across climate zones.So maybe public policy makers, public health officials, and the business community need to pay attention to these things. First, this is a group of people who care deeply about gas prices.As many as 76 percent of all people who commute by car do so alone, and presumably this number is even higher among those who commute too far. (Going to work at 4:30 in the morning is really hard to get someone to share your car with, and there are few people who travel 125 miles to work like you.) Midas • Far Award winner Mr. Givens said he was spending about $800 a month on gas at the time of the award.When George W. Bush said in his 2006 State of the Union address that Americans were "reliant on oil," a man in North Carolina who commuted too far stood on end stand up."Are we still going to work?" she asked. People who live in cities may not care about gas taxes, but these 3 million people are not going to vote for a candidate for a gas tax any time soon. People who commute too far are also at greater risk for behaviors such as manic driving, as well as health problems.According to Dr. John H. Casada, an expert on driver stress, the farther people travel to and from get off work, the more likely they are to develop mania — and not only Leads to violence and can lead to heart attacks, strokes and ulcers. Traveling too far to work has also been linked to obesity.Researchers at Georgia Tech found that every 30 minutes of driving puts you at risk of gaining 3 percent of your body weight.In a 2005 ABC/WashingtonPost poll about traffic conditions, four out of 10 people said they ate while stuck in traffic. In his 2000 book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam apparently found that for every 10 minutes you spend commuting to and from get off work, you spend more time at home and in the community. 10% less. (I guess, unless you bring your kids to work for day care.) A lot of people who commute long distances buy suburban low-cost homes in pursuit of the small-town life, but that's pretty unfortunate in my opinion, too Very self-sacrificing.A lot of people who commute do it for their families -- to give them a better life, a better school.Others wait to get together on the weekend, citing their weeklong drive and commute just to have the weekend. Many commuting groups also have important commercial implications.According to a 2006 report in Newsweek, fast-food restaurants have introduced complete meals that fit in cup sleeves, and some cars are now fitted with more cup holders than seats.Gas stations have installed touchscreen menus at pumps so people can order a sandwich while filling up and have something to eat when they drive away.Satellite navigation systems now also feature real-time traffic selection to help drivers avoid traffic jams.The next battleground, observers say, is comfort seating.Those who spend more than 3 hours a day behind the wheel may be interested in ultra-comfort devices like a back massager. (Until now, no one has developed a hygienic, socially acceptable, portable car toilet.) Finally, people who commute too far are a group with a lot of time to spend on their own.Some tape sales companies claim that you only need to listen to their Spanish teaching tapes for 16 hours, and you will have enough foundation to learn Spanish from scratch.In any case, people who commute too far can learn to speak a few words of Spanish in a week by listening to such tapes in the car without giving up other activities.And in two or three months, they may become interpreters for the Federation, if they can't keep their current jobs. People who commute too far can also listen to books on tape.They're like speed readers as they commute.They can listen to War and Peace within 12 days and The Da Vinci Code within 5 days. Lyndon Johnson said he was declaring a war on poverty and embarking on massive urban renewal because he predicted 95 percent of Americans wanted to live in cities.But in fact, people have turned the countryside into suburbs and exurbs faster than anyone predicted. (This just goes to show how difficult it is to predict what America will look like 50 years from now—when you focus on those few megatrends, other smaller ones come in and mess with your expectations. ) Those employers who moved to the suburbs did get closer to some of their workplaces.But for a large group of other workers, the only result of their employer's relocation is to encourage them to move further afield -- and for many, it's a sign that the most important thing is a house, a yard And a quieter life, no matter what the cost in money or time. The bottom line is that more and more Americans are on the road—and not many are finding themselves the way Jack Kerouac was.More likely, they're looking for a cup of coffee and a packaged Danish shortbread in the hope that today's traffic jam will be bearable and they know they'll have to walk the road tomorrow. international picture When the European Economic Community (EEC) was created in 1957, it was tasked with breaking down trade barriers and ensuring that all Europeans could travel freely within member countries.Jean Monnet, the founder of the European Economic Community, did not know at the time that this kind of "free travel" would appear in today's Europeans who commute too far, even by jet. Within Europe, Brits can be awarded for the longest average commuting time – 45 minutes, a full 20 minutes more than the US average.Members of the European Union (the successor to the European Economic Community) spend an average of 38 minutes at work, compared with 23 minutes in Italy and 44 minutes in Germany. But the interesting stories involve not just the monotonous commute, but the miles many commuters volunteer to travel long distances.Fully half the passengers on the fast cross-sea train Eurostar, which runs more than 200 miles between France and the UK, are commuters - mainly those who live in France and live in London people at work. (In 2007, for the first time, a French presidential candidate held a rally outside of France—an attempt to win over the nearly 500,000 French citizens who live or work in London.) Even more dramatic are those commuting by plane instead of driving or taking a train.One European travel agency predicts that by 2016, people who work in Britain but live in other countries - not just northern France, but also Barcelona, ​​Parma, Dobronik and Verona - will to 1.5 million.Low-fare airlines will make this possible.In 1994, there were zero low-cost airlines; in 2005, there were 60.Low-cost airlines such as Ryanair, easyJet and SkyEurope carried around 200 million passengers in 2003 alone. While commuting by air is growing rapidly in Europe, the phenomenon is in its infancy in Asia. Airlines such as Jetstar, Oasis, AirAsiaX, etc. are discounting fares at very low prices, but they still have to compete with mostly state-controlled airlines.However, you can expect Asians to jump on the trend sooner too.Chinese people already spend an average of an hour or more driving to work-compared to this, flying back and forth in the sky twice a day is a big deal!