Retirement is history
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The Sydney Morning Herald says retirement is now antiquated. Older people choose to stay employed past the age where earlier generations would have hung up their working clothes.
Older workers have long been commonplace in hardware stores, garden centres and similar retail establishments. In my personal experience grey-haired gentlemen are the best people to consult when you need help choosing the right tool for a particular handyman task – and they advise on how to problem solve handyman issues too.
No doubt older women are just as useful in their areas of expertise.
Which is an important point. Most old-timers have a huge store of knowledge locked away in their heads and are only too willing to pass it on but don't have the opportunity.
While the Sydney Morning Herald story has a nice balance of the good and bad aspects of having older people in the workforce it overlooks one significant aspect of the trend: many older people need to put off retirement for financial reasons. Falling interest rates and stock market carnage mean those carefully nurtured nest-eggs are suddenly smaller than a year or so ago and hence older people need work to make ends meet.