Too many older workers are retiring (50+, engaged, best, seniors)
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I'm one of these people. I retired, went back part-time (turned into nearly full-time) and am trying to retire again. My boss won't let me!
After I retired my old employer tried to get me to come back in different forms. They were very short handed (about 6 of us retired within a few months of each other). I don't believe they believed we would as none of us was even 60 yet. With Covid they were reluctant to hire after we did retire.
They asked me if I would come back if I could work only days (I worked rotating shift work). I said no. They asked me if I would come back to do some training of people they transferred in from elsewhere in the business. I said no.
Then they asked me if I would come in to help with the huge overtime load. That I could come in when and if I wanted to. I agreed to that. From June until November I averaged about 1 day a week. Maybe 5 days a month. The ironic thing was I offered a 7 day schedule before retiring and they turned that down.
I didn't take anything from early November until the other night I worked a night shift. I'm not sure I will work any more but I know I'm done working night shifts. They would have to offer a lot more money for me to do any more. I'm only 60 and while I do not have to, I don't mind working a bit but I would never take a job where I couldn't say no, if I didn't want to work.
Yup, time for 22-35 yos living in their parents basement playing destructive video games to go out, get a job and move out!
And yes, no matter what we do or don't do, we as boomers ate blamed for all the ills and wrongs in the world!
But, as Mike and the Mechanics sang in the song In the Living Years, where the first lines are:
" Every generation blames the one before, and all of their frustrations come beating at your door..."
Yup, time for 22-35 yos living in their parents basement playing destructive video games to go out, get a job and move out!
And yes, no matter what we do or don't do, we as boomers ate blamed for all the ills and wrongs in the world!
But, as Mike and the Mechanics sang in the song In the Living Years, where the first lines are:
" Every generation blames the one before, and all of their frustrations come beating at your door..."
Oh well, still the earth will turn and turn...
You need to actually talk to Millennials and Gen Z young adults. It's not what you think it is.
I've come up from basically nothing. Working to lower middle class parents, though the family stayed intact and promoted education. In college, I managed to torpedo the potential of a genius level IQ in college with extremely poor work ethic and a well-known, almost comical, drinking issue.
I'm 35. I graduated back in 2010 - making a whopping $15/hr, driving 100 mi. roundtrip daily to get that. This was driving from east TN through the mountains of rural southwest Virginia to the job site. Gas was about $3.50/gallon back then. Gas alone was 10%-15% of my net pay.
I moved to Iowa in 2012 for a job paying $22/hr with a normal commute. In hindsight, I should have never moved from here to a random dart on a map, but I moved back within a year because I just didn't like Iowa much. Once I was there, I should have stayed as the economic fundamentals were better there than here.
Blah, blah, blah. After other moves and many dances, the long and short of it is that it took me basically six years after graduation to get to a job with a living wage AND a decent level of expected career stability. After two promotions, I'm now moving on.
With bonus, I should make about $110k this year in regular company pay. With investments, I'd like to hit $122k-$125k, primarily on crypto profit taking and some high gain share sells. That seems feasible based off this year's returns. The girlfriend makes about $75k before bonuses. We could, though it's not certain, eclipse $200k in income this year.
Some folks my age are doing a hell of a lot better than I am. Most are doing a hell of a lot worse. My net worth has gone up around $100k since 1/1/2020. I'll be making six figures a few miles outside the city limits of my dream metro. I'll be remote 4/5 days a week, 90 minutes away, with a mortgage of $675/month. Tons of discretionary income for outdoor pursuits, tech splurges, and travel.
My girlfriend lives about twenty minutes outside of Asheville. I can stay over there anytime I want for an event, etc., outside of our normal rotating schedule.
I was suicidal this time eight years ago. My life was falling apart. At that time, I could have never imagined working from Bristol 4/5 days a week, driving to Asheville for the other day, and making six figures.
The big social changes were by the War Generation: Women's liberation, Civil Rights, environmentalism, even going to the moon.
What have we Boomers done in comparison that hasn't merely been a continuation of what the War Generation started?
Globalization. We can lay claim to having sent manufacturing to China.
I can't really say my own sub-generation has done much at all. My older sisters led protests to allow girls to wear pants to school and fought with my mother to wear skirts above the knee. Their classmates went to Vietnam and the ones who stayed home marched in protest against the war.
By the time I came of age in the early-to-mid 70s, Vietnam was ending, nobody protested for anything anymore, we were starting to see women mail carriers and cops, and we had no causes. We were apathetic teens who hung out in the woods smoking pot and drinking beer. Sad, but true.
How true. I remember being sent home from school and my mother was sitting in front of the TV crying.
Also remember watching the funeral on TV. And that was about all I remember.
I was five and in the waiting room at the dentist office. There was a clock radio, the old-fashioned kind with an analog clock, and suddenly the nurse ran over and turned up the radio, and my mother jumped up and said, "Did they say the President was shot?"
I didn't know what any of this meant, but I knew from the way the adults were acting that it was something bad and I hoped that it meant I didn't have to go into the room where the dentist was. No such luck.
After that I remember snatches, such as a picture of JFK on the front of the paper and telling my father, "That's not the President. That's just a regular man. The President has long white hair with curls on the bottom." My father laughed. Apparently "President" to me meant George Washington.
And then I remember the funeral on TV with a horse and my mother crying and me asking her, "Why are you crying? Did you know him?"
I can't really say my own sub-generation has done much at all. My older sisters led protests to allow girls to wear pants to school and fought with my mother to wear skirts above the knee. Their classmates went to Vietnam and the ones who stayed home marched in protest against the war.
By the time I came of age in the early-to-mid 70s, Vietnam was ending, nobody protested for anything anymore, we were starting to see women mail carriers and cops, and we had no causes. We were apathetic teens who hung out in the woods smoking pot and drinking beer. Sad, but true.
But that's because your generation didn't see any imminent stressors.
There's nothing wrong with that.
Aside from growing up in a deprived part of Appalachia - ten years ago, I'd have felt similarly. Life has gotten more complicated by the day.
I'm one of these people. I retired, went back part-time (turned into nearly full-time) and am trying to retire again. My boss won't let me!
Same here. I retired almost six years ago and since then have had three part-time jobs, none of which I applied for. The last one has lasted more than four years. I have not worked in six months, since I am taking care of a seriously ill partner, and I recently wrote to my employer because they paid me for holidays and I told them it was a mistake and that they should take the money back. The response was that they still consider me part of their "family" and that they hope I will continue to do some work for them virtually next year.
It seems not that long ago I heard complaints that older workers weren't retiring and this was holding up younger workers from getting better jobs. Now we are hearing complaining about older workers retiring. Can we make up our minds?
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pknopp
After I retired my old employer tried to get me to come back in different forms. ...
Then they asked me if I would come in to help with the huge overtime load. That I could come in when and if I wanted to. I agreed to that. ...the other night I worked a night shift. I'm not sure I will work any more but I know I'm done working night shifts. ...
Send your night shift + overtime my way, I'm not busy with anything special during my nights, just so I'm free each day for fun and farming. I've always much preferred working nights and weekends. Not much competition / desire for those shifts.
No employment planned for 2022, good time to WORK at downsizing and completing more projects in preparation for Post-Covid travel and the other stuff (death and disability).
The remaining (few) workers at my last employment are enjoying huge pay raises and profit sharing, in part due to many less employees with whom to divide the spoils.
There is still a lot of bitterness against Boomers for hogging the 'good' jobs for too long.
Correct, although I would not extend the Boomer generation as far as 1964 (and originally, it did not extend that far).
If you check birthrate statistics, there was a post-WWII baby boom and then a smaller--but very definite--post-Korean War peak as well. But the high birth rate statistics take a sudden and abrupt nose dive in 1959...they fall right off a cliff. The baby boom was definitely over by 1960.
And in terms of shared generational experiences, there is still a cut-off recognizable. Boomers, for instance, remember where they were when Kennedy's assassination was announced just as War-Genners remember where they were when the attack on Pearl Harbor was announced.
I do recall that the original cut-off for the baby boomer generation was 1960 or was it 1959. That made more sense. If you are born in 1964, you are born after the JFK assassination.
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, I'm not busy with anything special during my nights, just so I'm free each day for fun and farming. I've always much preferred working nights and weekends. Not much competition / desire for those shifts. 
