While not everyone is ready to admit it, retirement as a concept is more or less dead. It had a good run but has grown into an outdated concept. But why is that? What killed retirement? The simple answer, boomers did.
Retirement was a social construct which was excepted as the norm for many years. Whether people wanted to retire or not, it was expected of them and some businesses even imposed a mandatory retirement age. When those conventions went out the window, it fell on the employees themselves to decide when they said goodbye to working life. Now that boomers are reaching the that “traditional” age of retirement, they are overwhelmingly passing it by.
Yes, there are some who say they are working towards their retirement, and some who even call it by that name, but it is not true retirement. It is a break, a career pivot, or what’s been coined an “encore career”. The movement cannot be entirely credited to boomers’ unique work ethic (though it surely plays a role). There are other circumstances to consider such as financial necessities, the fact that boomers live longer and healthier lives than previous generations, and the emerging availability of a work-life balance.
So as the younger generations begin to move into the workforce and businesses begin to worry about a lack of experienced talent, boomers continue to show to reassure them that retirement is a long way off