The Targeted Initiative for Older Workers webpage provides information for Canadians aged 55 to 64 who are looking for employment. [Photo © Jessica Kenny]
By Jessica Kenny
Canadians may begin working themselves into early graves. But according to health experts, working may have the opposite effect.
Several recent studies indicate that Canadians are working longer and retiring later than in the past. Thirty-two per cent of Canadians anticipate that they will still be working after age 65, according to a 2014 survey by Sun Life Financial. Statistics Canada reported that more than half of Canadians aged 55 to 59 returned to work within 10 years of retiring in the 2000s. In 2011, almost 20 per cent of employed Canadians were over 55 years old.
Experts say working longer may have significant health benefits for older people. In their book, The Longevity Project, authors Howard S. Friedman and Leslie R. Martin document an American study that looks at lifestyle choices and habits that contribute to long, healthy lives. They describe their findings regarding working later in life as “dramatic.”
“The continually productive men and women lived much longer than their more laid-back comrades,” they wrote. “This productive orientation mattered more than their social relationships or their sense of happiness and well-being.”
“I’ll be 73 in August, but I feel 59.” – Pauline Chabot
Dr. Allen Huang, chief of geriatric medicine at the Ottawa Hospital, says that working longer does have its benefits.
“The best job is both physical and mental,” says Huang. He finds that office workers are at risk of developing sedentary problems, while labour workers are not always cognitively engaged. Regardless, Huang notices that people are not slowing down after 65.
“That number has less and less meaning for them,” he says.
In 2012, people over the age of 65 comprised 14.9 per cent of the Canadian population.
York University professor Thomas Klassen says the lack of a mandatory retirement age in Canada has opened the doors for many Canadians to continue working. He discusses this in his book, Retirement in Canada. In an email, he outlined three reasons that Canadians are working longer than 20 to 30 years ago:
- some may not have enough money saved to support themselves through retirement;
- they receive more than just income, but health benefits too; and
- Canadians are starting their careers later and are living longer, so working longer becomes a requirement.
“The reality is that the situation of each worker and his/her family is different,” writes Klassen.
Working benefits older couple in Ottawa
JP and Pauline Chabot run a real estate business in Ottawa. Both grandparents in their early 70s, they became real estate agents as second careers.
“My wife made me do it,” jokes JP. He retired from the Armed Forces in 1998. JP was a pilot in Belgium and Paris before settling into a desk job in Ottawa. After Pauline retired from teaching, she joined Royal Lepage Real Estate and JP began assisting her. She builds clientele, books viewings, and sells, while he prepares the paper work, posts listings and updates the website.
“She has stayed in it and she’s doing quite well,” JP says.
Pauline believes that working after retirement has kept her productive and healthy. “I’ll be 73 in August, but I feel 59,” she says. Teaching was very demanding and tiring for her. But soon after retiring, she decided she needed a challenge.
“For one year, I did nothing… and I got really bored,” she says.
One of Pauline’s first listings gave her a strong sense of fulfillment. “My first, nice listing picked me up and told me I could do a lot,” she says.
She had not considered that working could keep her healthier, but she thinks it probably has had positive effects. “I’m not sick at all,” she says. “So it cannot hurt.”
JP thinks working has benefitted his mind, though he takes care of his physical health. “I’ve always done sports regularly. I still do it,” he says. “Maybe [work] keeps my brain going.”
Both JP and Pauline plan on slowing down in the next few years. They hope to travel and have more leisure time.
Unlike JP and Pauline, some older Canadians must continue working past age 65 to support themselves in their later years and government programs are not available to help them.
The Targeted Initiative for Older Workers is a federal-provincial program that helps unemployed Canadians aged 55 to 64 with employment activities. It aims to help vulnerable communities with populations lower than 250, 000 to bring positive changes to the local economy. Thirty two thousand workers have been through the program since it began in 2006. Only four per cent of these workers were over the age of 64.
If almost one-third of Canadians expect to work past age 65, the Canadian government may need to consider implementing new programs to support older workers in the near future.
