Mike
Carruthers:
The
American workplace has changed a lot in the past few decades.
One dramatic shift is the notion of retiring at sixty-five.
James O'Toole:
Sixty-five today is the new fifty-five and people still
feel young at age sixty-five and they want to keep working and
they're so disinclined to sit on the front porch in the rocker.
James O'Toole,
co-author of the book The
New American Workplace…
Part of the good
news of that is too that the demographic glut that we have coming
up where there appeared to be a shortage of workers - I think
we'll be more than taken care by older workers who just really
do want to stay on the job. So, America will not experience
a shortage of workers in the next twenty years.
Another dramatic
change, thirty years ago people worked nine to five and at five
o'clock you went home.
You started thinking
about baseball or playing with your kids or having dinner with
the family. Today when you go home you've still got your cell
phone on, you're still checking emails, you may even have a
second job and so the end of the workday isn't the end of work.
But interestingly
James says today's workers don't complain about that lack of
work/life balance.
I think that's,
to me, one of the biggest surprises - that even though journalists
seemed to be concerned with work/life balance you look at the
data - and what the average American says about the work/life
balance - they're not all that upset about spending more time
engaged in work.
At somethingyoushouldknow.net
I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.
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