“If you imagine that age 81 means shuffleboard, golf carts, and sitting on the beach, David Mintz will make you reconsider. The founder and CEO of food brand Tofutti, Mintz works 15-hour shifts, sometimes driving 500 miles a day to visit his factories. He sleeps four or five hours a night and works out every morning. “I’m working harder now than 20 years ago,” he says.
Mintz and others like him are leading a shift toward working later into life. Just 11 percent of people older than age 65 were still working in 1993, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Today, that figure has reached almost 18 percent – and it’s climbing.
Most of these workers are not just putting in a few hours: A 2008 study of people age 50 and older who retired and then went back to work found that 54 percent were employed full time and 19 percent worked more than 41 hours a week.
All of this could mean good news for the larger economy. As baby boomers move into their later years, the 65-and-over population will grow from about 13 percent in 2010 to a projected 20 percent by 2030. The rising population of seniors who work will bring stronger economic growth – if companies can retool to accommodate an older workforce, say economists and experts.
But if companies fail to plan ahead, they might also see costs mount: By one estimate, health insurance premiums for workers age 65 and older cost companies almost three times as much as those age 25.
People working in their later years could help with the country’s fiscal problems, says Gary Burtless, a Brookings Institution economist who is finalizing a study on the issue. Every additional year that a person stays on the job brings more revenue to the federal treasury in income taxes. If current trends continue, working seniors will have a positive, if small, impact on federal deficits under the most plausible budget projections….”
