Lina Ko October 29th, 2007
On October 16, 2007, a retired 62-year-old school teacher became the first baby boomer in the U.S. eligible for pension benefits. The Social Security Commissioner in the U.S., Michael Astrue, said the agency is bracing for some 80 million Americans to apply for retirement benefits over the next two decades.
In Canada, most boomers want to keep going. Some want to, others need to. Either way, Freedom 55 is not happening to a growing number of older workers.
According to Statistics Canada, more than 2 million Canadians (56 per cent) between the ages of 55 and 64 had a job in 2006. That’s more than double the number in 1976. About three-quarters worked in the service sector and the majority of them worked full time. The proportion of people between the ages of 60 and 64 in the workforce reached a peak last year while three-quarters of Canadian men between 55 and 59 were either working or looking for work. Demographers are not expecting this trend to reverse any time soon.
Many boomers are remaining at work because they enjoy it and they feel they are wanted. The job market is tight and this is an educated group. If this trend continues, the threat of a labour crunch in the next decade as the exodus of retiring boomers leave vacancies in the job market will be diminished.
While some boomers want to work, others have no choice. Spending on early retirement incentives peaked in 1996. Many workers are realizing that their nest eggs are smaller than they expected. For those who are hit by a divorce or have a child still in university, the financial position is even more precarious. Others are shouldering some of the financial burdens of caregiving when their parents are living longer.
Longevity is another reason why boomers want to keep going. A person who gets to age 60 these days has a 50-50 chance of living to 92. Boomers often see outliving their money as their greatest fear.
The fact that boomers want to work till they drop is actually good news for employers. What should Corporate Canada do to capitalize on this opportunity?
Lina Ko October 22nd, 2007
Contrary to popular belief, a growing number of social-networking websites are being developed for people over the age of 50. According to an Internet monitoring company, 14 per cent of adult Internet users are older than 55. It also predicts seniors in Britain will overtake 35 to 44-year-olds as the age group with the largest representation online. There’s a boom in networking sites targeting older people interested in keeping in touch with friends and chatting about subjects such as diet and health care.
According to the executives at GrowingBolder.com, on average, people over 50 spend more time online than any other demographic group, but so far have been ignored by online entrepreneurs. North America is such a youth worshipping culture and Hollywood is partly to blame for that. It’s enlightening to see that there’s a dramatic, revolutionary change under way right now. It’s no longer people fighting ageing – they are embracing ageing. Unilever’s ProAge Campaign for Dove certainly reflects this trend.
Online marketing trade publisher, iMedia Connection, says more than 43 million people aged 50 or older used the Internet in 2005 – up 21 per cent from the previous year. These users generally have more money to spend and show more loyalty to certain web sites. Marketers are now spending more and more online as Baby Boomers now have a relevant voice on ‘greying Internet’ sites such as GrowingBolder, Boomertown, Multiply and Rezoom.
Lina Ko October 15th, 2007
I read with interest Mark J. Penn’s latest book, Microtrends – The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Changes. Mark, the President of Penn, Schoen & Berland, and also the chief strategist of Hilary Clinton’s Presidential Campaign, single-handedly coined the term ‘soccer moms’ before it became a mainstream category.
If you read my last article on this blog – Mark The ‘New Singles’ – Mr. Penn’s book has confirmed that what Statistics Canada has revealed about the change of the Canadian family, the same phenomenon is occurring in the U.S. For the first time in America too, there are more single women than ever who are likely to stay that way. This explains why there are more and more older women dating younger men and Mr. Penn quoted our own Valerie Gibson (sex columnist for the Toronto Sun) who first came up with the term ‘Cougars’ describing such boomer women.
According to Mr. Penn, older men seeking young trophy wives is an age-old phenomenon. Women’s growing financial and sexual independence have made them, too, increasingly interested in younger dates.
A couple of factors have triggered the growth of the ‘Cougars’, said Mr. Penn. High divorce rates combined with longer life spans means a greater likelihood of women reentering the dating market. Women’s success in the workforce means that some women want a man with a less developed career – so that he can move if she needs to, and perhaps be their kids’ primary caretaker.
The central premise of the book Microtrends is that only one percent of the population is enough to launch a business or social movement. This is one microtrend that prevails in North America, including Canada.
Lina Ko October 1st, 2007
The numbers recently released based on the 2006 Census surprise a lot of people. The picture of traditional Canadian families, with the married mom and dad who had children who grew up and married, and had their own kids making mom and dad still-married grandparents, is no longer here.
Married couples are now the minority. Divorce rate is up and most couples prefer living together to getting married. Nearly 60 per cent of Canadians aged 20 to 24 live with their parents, compared with 41 per cent two decades earlier. Three million Canadian households are now living alone. These are the men and women who are not necessarily old maids or odd single men who never got married; they are not even widows or widowers – these are the ‘New Singles’ who opt to live on their own.
Apart from an ageing population, this astonishing stat can partly be attributed to how technology and the frustration with relationships have turned us inward; where the once-coveted happily-ever-after-married-with-kids life is often seen as unattainable, inconvenient or an economic challenge.
Within my own circle, there are quite a number of boomer women living alone. We are marrying later in life, if at all. We are having children later in life, if at all. If we divorce, we often don’t remarry. A lot of my friends are either a mid-40s or mid-50s man or woman who never seemed to make the love connection that would take them from one-person household to married with children, but instead took the career path that led to the high-rise condo, the new car every few years and the annual vacation in an exotic resort outside Canada.
That’s why I don’t understand why we continue to see TV commercials and ads showing happy, greying couples living happily ever after. It’s about time that marketers should better understand and segment boomers – by all means include the couples; but please give some thought to the new generation of ‘singles’ who have earned a new-found freedom, especially in the first few years of solo life, when waking up alone on a Sunday morning to a quiet house or condo with no responsibility.