The nation’s first generation of knowledge professionals, some 30-million Americans who’ve earned a living through their education, intelligence and expertise, has reached or is nearing retirement age. For more than half, this feels like a life sentence to purgatory, according to the most scientific studies ever done on this generation, but many are coming back to the workforce.
Facts:
- By the year 2030 the number of working 65-plus-year-old Americans with college or advanced degrees will be greater than the populations of Los Angeles and Chicago combined.
- Americans aged 75 and older, at all educational levels, are now the fastest-growing part of the U.S. workforce, with the percentage of employed people in this group nearly doubling over the past three decades.
- More than 50% of American knowledge executives and professionals in their late 50’s and beyond are now or will soon be unhappy and unfulfilled in retirement.
Mark S. Walton is a Peabody award-winning journalist and business author, Fortune 100 management consultant, and Chairman of the Center for Leadership Communication, a global executive education and communication enterprise with a focus on leadership and exceptional achievement at every stage of life. He is additionally Founder and Chairman of the Second Half Institute, a founding correspondent of Cable News Network (CNN), he served as CNN’s first Chief White House Correspondent and, later, as CNN’s Senior Correspondent, traveling the nation and world from CNN headquarters in Atlanta. The book ‘CNN: The Inside Story’ characterizes him as “one of a small group of renegades who changed the face of TV News.”
Mark’s much anticipated sequel to his Amazon bestseller Boundless Potential and the nationwide PBS-TV Special that it spawned, with over a decade of research has now been released. Entitled, UNRETIRED How Highly Effective People Live Happily Ever After, Mark crisscrossed the country, visiting with passionately unretired CEO’s, Mayo clinic doctors, attorneys, neuroscientists, psychologists, financial experts, journalists and more, to chronicle their stories, share their lessons learned, and unpack the seismic trend that’s changing the map of life.
After a decade long-research the facts in the book are startling, such as:
- The more successful you are in your career, especially financially, the more likely you are to feel like a failure in retirement.
- At the #1 medical center in the nation, the Mayo Clinic, 10% of the leading physicians and medical researchers are over age 65, and many are in their 70’s.
- If adequately challenged, the brains of older knowledge executives and professionals are fully capable of high level intellectual, creative, scientific, and political achievements.
- High level creative skills and abilities that we never knew we possessed commonly emerge in our late 50’s and beyond.
- In today’s tight labor market, U.S. employers have become increasingly receptive to older job applicants, especially professionals.
Mark makes for a fascinating interview to speak to how the number of college educated Americans in their mid-60s and beyond who have kept working rather than retire. Review copies are available as well. If you would like to schedule an interview with Mark, and/or if there is an article that you are working on that would lend itself to Mark’s expertise, he is happy to comment.
Contact: Ana Tackett | Publicist
