Let's Have Some 50 Over 50 Contests
Robert Cenek
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"40 under 40” contests are still being baked with the same fervor not seen since Martha Stewart tried to convince the jury that she had a standing sell order with her stockbroker. The originators of these campaigns, frequently regional business journals, are clearly in a time warp, not realizing that celebratory exultation of the region’s top yuppies, like leisure suits, are now passé – and about as original as Jessica Simpson’s music. Googling the phrase “40 under 40,” will produce approximately 400,000 entries. Googling the phrase “50 over 50,” produces around 12,000 hits. Things get even more bleak for the “60 over 60” crowd, as a Google search only nets 900 hits. It’s interesting to point out, however, that one enlightened business journal, which being the Rochester Business Journal, understands how important those over 50 are to their respective business organizations and communities, and to the future vitality of American business. The publication sponsored a “50 over 50” awards banquet in 2003.
Here’s the upshot, and it’s nothing new. In 2000, 12 percent of the U.S. population was age 65 or older. By 2025, the share of the population aged 65 and over is expected to rise to 19 percent, higher than the share of older residents in Florida today. Add to this the following projection by Mitra Toossi, an economist with the Bureau of Labor Studies (BLS):
“The labor force in the next 10 years will be affected by the aging of the baby-boom cohort, those born between 1946 and 1964. This age group will be between 50 and 68 years old in 2014 and is expected to show significant growth over the 2004–14 period, as it did from 2002 to 2012. The labor force will continue to age, with the annual growth rate of the 55-and-older group projected to be 4.1 percent, 4 times the rate of growth of the overall labor force. By contrast, the annual growth rate of the 25-to-54-year age group will be 0.3 percent, and that of the young age group consisting of 16-to-24-year-olds will be essentially flat.”
The potentially devastating effects of this demographical tsunami can be mitigated by getting more Boomers to actually do what they are promising to do – delay their full exit from the workforce. Government, industry and other social institutions need to NOW take aggressive steps to support the retention of aging Boomers. One of the many actions that could help would be to recognize and outright glamorize the life and contributions of the older worker.
Boomers have consistently defined each decade that they’ve experienced, beginning with the 60’s. They’ll probably continue that habit over the next two decades, and it will surely include altering longstanding assumptions about the aging worker.
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