Aging Baby Boomers Delay Retirement

Image by: Paul Joseph

Baby boomer Terry David Mulligan fought mandatory retirement and now works for himself.

It’s the biggest demographic shift to hit B.C. in decades. The oldest baby boomers 
are now just a year away from retirement, and workers and employers alike are 
struggling with the change. Some, as the case of ex-MuchMusic host Terry David 
Mulligan indicates, are faring better than others.

For someone who felt he’d almost had it all, the legal papers Terry David Mulligan received in mid-November of 2007 left him incredulous. Boomer that he was, familiar with the ’60s mantra of drugs, sex and rock ’n’ roll, comfortable with the entitlements of his generation, he’d ridden the wave of North American pop culture to celebrity: emceeing the benefit concert at the founding of Greenpeace, surviving Janis Joplin’s efforts to outdrink him over a bottle of Southern Comfort, schmoozing with the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix and George Harrison, hosting CBC Television’s Good Rockin’ Tonite, working for Much­Music and interviewing everybody who was anybody in Hollywood for decades. He had a wife, four kids, a mortgage and a six-figure income. 


• More: Definitions and Statistics on B.C.'s Big Three Generations

Then, out of the blue, came the package from his employer. At age 65, Mulligan heard that, after 24 years with CHUM and its new owner CTVglobemedia Inc., he was being let go. His last day of work would be six weeks later: December 31, 2007. No explanation, no apology and a minimal severance package since he had, CTV argued, begun receiving his CPP pension. It was just a coincidence, he was assured, that a new B.C. law prohibiting mandatory retirement at 65 would come into effect one day later: January 1, 2008. 


For the millions of Canadian baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1962) who soon face the prospect of careers ending, pensions beginning and the insults of age, the assurances of past comfort provide little relief. Today the median age of boomers is 54, and numerous studies indicate that almost half of them plan to retire at 60, or earlier. Still other studies indicate that, with mandatory retirement now removed from every provincial jurisdiction, a lot of Canadian boomers don’t plan, or can’t afford, to retire – ever. A few things are clear: the percentage of employed people who are 55 to 64, those currently riding the crest of the boomer wave, will rise dramatically in the next decade and will comprise 20 per cent of the entire Canadian workforce by 2020. Conversely, the percentage of gen X and Y workers will shrink. Where today there are five active workers for every pensioner, by 2030 the ratio will be three workers for every pensioner, putting significant pressure on employers, health-care financing and pension plans for many years to come. 


So hundreds of thousands of B.C. boomers and hundreds of local companies and institutions are about to confront the complex (and sometimes frightening) consequences of this demographic tsunami. But the natural volatility of the boomer generation makes it hard to predict exactly what’s about to happen. Retire early and travel? Never retire? Take the company buyout? Work part time? Start a new business? Divorce, sell the house and grab a backpack? Businesses and policy-makers, trying to figure out how to deal with the impending boomer-propelled disruptions and demands, have no precedents with which to measure what will survive 
and what will tumble, and what needs adjustment now.


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