Reinvent Your Career, and Get Ready for the Next 3

As the economy rebounds, the workplace will need older workers to fill a widening talent gap between the number of people available to work and the demand for workers, particularly those with skills and experience. Growth in knowledge-based jobs will lessen the demand for physical labor and reinforce acceptance of older workers.

The growing shortage of talent will shift power—those who want to work will have more options for reshaping the relationship between employees and employers.

The bottom line is that most people will have 20 to 30 years of healthy, productive life after age 65. Boomers (typically defined as those born between 1946 and 1964) will be the first generation to enjoy a new life stage—a significant period of active, non–child-rearing life.

With current life expectancies permitting people to live into their 90s, boomers who will be leaving their first career in their mid-60s will have 20 or 30 more years ahead of them. Many will have as much time for a second career as they had for their had for their first—ample years to go back to school, start in a new profession, found a company, or almost anything else one can imagine.