The economy's dizzying downturn has changed the career landscape for workers across the generations.
Among baby boomers, a growing number are seeing their dreams of freedom 55, or even freedom 65, evaporate. Many are now considering delaying retirement and keeping at a job long after they thought their working days would be over.
It's also affecting many who have already taken retirement and never expected to be knocking on employers' doors again. Having watched their pensions and investments erode, they are thinking about having to return to the job market.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the age spectrum, the swooning economy has also poured a cold shower on many Generation Yers, who grew up coddled, courted and figuring they'd have an easy career ride. But the financial crisis is putting some unexpected roadblocks in their way.
Such an environment is all new for Gen Y workers - those born after 1980 - who entered the job market in boom times. Because they have never before encountered a shrinking job market, they will face the toughest career adjustments of any employees during the downturn, career experts say.
Employers who not so long ago might have been fretting about looming talent shortages as baby boomers headed for retirement en masse may now, instead, may be looking at a talent glut as those same older workers seek to hang on to their jobs.
These are themes that have dominated recent stories in Globe Careers. How are they playing out in the working world and how should those affected handle their working lives? Career expert Barbara Moses is online to field your questions on these and other career-related topics. Or get a jump on the queue by submitting your questions here.
Dr. Moses is a well-known organizational career management consultant, author and speaker, who writes and talks widely about career issues and smart ways to navigate the modern working world. She writes her monthly Career Intelligence column for The Globe and Mail's Careers section and is the best-selling author of four books, including What Next: Find the Work That's Right for You, and her latest book, Dish: Midlife Women Tell the Truth about Work, Relationships, and the Rest of Life.
She is also president of BBM Human Resource Consultants Inc., which helps organizations implement career-management programs, and the designer of Career Advisor, an online career planning tool used by major organizations. She holds degrees in psychology from McGill University, The London School of Economics and the University of Toronto.
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Terry Brodie, Editor, Globe Careers: Welcome, Barbara, and thanks for joining us.
Well, times have certainly changed recently and we've been looking at how it affects workers of all ages.
But why does it matter so much how old you are or what generation you are part of as to how you will experience the current economic turmoil? And what's the significance of it?
Barbara Moses: Thanks, Terry. I'm looking forward to this. This is a complicated question but let me see if I can briefly tackle it.
Our attitudes and expectations about work are shaped, in part, by the dominant social and economic forces that existed while we were growing up, and then again by those when we entered the workplace. What characterized those periods - abundance or scarcity?
Boomers, for example, were the first generation who grew up during a period of North American economic ascendancy and stability. They were told that they were special and could have it all. And they were in huge demand when they entered the workplace. The result of these forces at play during their childhood and entry into the job market was they thought that there would be an endless feast of career opportunities and that they could quickly scramble up the corporate ladder.
