When engineers at a suburban Chicago manufacturing plant get together for their regular after-hours poker games, they speculate as to when the promotions pipeline at work will finally unclog.
Midcareer engineers and energetic twenty-somethings all want to know: When will the retirement-age crowd finally decide to leave, opening up a handful of top spots and a ripple of openings all the way down the line?
“I don’t understand these guys who got their 45-year [service] plaques a couple of years ago,” said one 26-year-old engineer, who asked not to be named to avoid embarrassing his co-workers. “They’re staying a lot longer at work because of the economy. They don’t say they’re glad or not glad [to be working]. They’re just there.”
Yes, there they are: the 58- to 68-year-olds who thought that by now they’d be good and gone. Whether they’re trying to squeeze out a couple more years to rebuild their battered retirement portfolios or just don’t know what they’d do without work, there they are.
According to the Census Bureau, the number of Americans working beyond age 65 increased by nearly 50 percent between 1980 and 2002. About 4.5 million people aged 65 or older–or 13.2 percent of all seniors–were working or seeking work in 2002. In contrast, about 3 million older Americans, or 12.6 percent of seniors, were in the workforce in 1980.
And where they are, others aren’t. Some midcareer professionals and managers are frustrated because the lingering presence of seniors blocks them from moving ahead.
Turnaround ahead?
Big-picture academics and consultants say that by the end of this decade, career mobility will be a freeway with no speed limits. By 2010, the first wave of Baby Boomers will hit their mid-60s and can ride off into the sunset with full retirement benefits. In fact, consultants worry not that today’s 60-somethings are staying on the job, but that companies won’t be able to persuade enough of them to continue to work when the economy rebounds.
That projected scenario doesn’t help the ones stuck in their midcareer positions, wondering if they should make a lateral move or, as the 26-year-old engineer says, “sweat through it,” in the hopes that demonstrating loyalty will result in a promotion as soon as the clog gives way.
Midcareer workers at old-line companies are most likely to be blocked by reluctant would-be retirees, said Kathleen Mcdonald, president of organizational development consulting firm The Mcdonald Group, in Ann Arbor, Mich. Companies that suffered through the layoffs of the early 1980s and haven’t beefed up their ranks since then have a disproportionate number of entrenched 50- to 65-year-olds.
“There’s a tremendous amount of stability in the older group,” she said. “You couldn’t blow them out with a small nuclear device. But in the younger group, it’s a revolving door. They come, get a few years’ experience, look at the clog above them and say, `goodbye.'” Midcareer professionals in well-established career categories–engineering, technical professionals, logistics and upper middle management–are the most likely to feel stuck, she added.
“There certainly is no place to go at my company,” said Brad Schroeder, 40, a senior product engineer in the Brake & Chassis division of Dana Corp., in McHenry. One key factor behind the opportunity gridlock is the ongoing employment of past-retirement-age professionals, he added.
“It’s my opinion that a large company should provide a diversity of different [work] groups and set up paths for those who desire to have them, so that if you’re willing to work, you have an opportunity to advance,” Schroeder said. “I definitely feel that I’m not in that situation. I’m kind of in a pickle because I don’t know where I’ll go.”
Economy worsens gridlock
Part of the problem is that the expectations were inflated in the go-go late 1990s, says Dale Masi, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland who also runs her own consulting firm, Masi Research Consultants.
Five years ago, promotions were coming so fast that it was easy for people to take that pace as the norm, she explains. The fact that many people jumped at the chance to retire early–buoyed by rich investment portfolios, swelling real estate values and generous early-retirement packages–also thinned the ranks of older workers who were at all inclined to leave.
Those who didn’t retire have good reasons for continuing to work. Two recent studies by the Conference Board, a Washington-area think tank, found that workers age 55 and older continue working because they like to remain active. More than two-thirds also cite financial need as a motivation, but the same proportion crave more training and more leadership development opportunities. Meanwhile, only a quarter of them think that younger employees have a negative perception about the older crew staying on.
Talk of retirement avoided
At many companies, resentment about stagnating careers due to immovable older workers is a taboo subject, says Claire Raines, author of several books on cross-generational work relationships, most recently “Connecting Generations” (Crisp Publications, $16.95).
Without clear-cut expectations as to when a worker will definitely leave, those next in line are left to fruitlessly speculate about when openings might next emerge.
Retirement-age workers don’t usually bring it up because they aren’t sure themselves when is the right time to leave. They want to have their gold watch and wear it too: They want the right to retire when the time seems ripe but don’t want anybody implying that they’ve overstayed their welcome, Raines says.
Midcareer workers understandably are reluctant to bring up the topic with their older colleagues, but they shouldn’t have any qualms about having confidential discussions with human resources staffers about succession plans, or lack of them, for the department, Raines added.
