Twilight Of The Boomers

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Not to mention plenty of smart, energetic 33-year-olds who are more than eager to step into the shoes of every smart, not-so-energetic 53-year-old--for less money too, and probably with more appropriate new-economy skills. (The guy in the next office who's still having his secretary print out his e-mail must be planning to win the lottery.) Consequently, says Challenger, boomers who haven't reached, and won't reach, the top "are being squeezed from below as well." It's a squeeze that has brought on a psychic shortness of breath: the 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce, comparing the attitudes of men and women ages 46 to 51 with a similar cadre studied in 1977, exposed the hollowness and the fear creeping up on the leading-edge boomers: in the original survey more than half felt it highly unlikely they'd soon lose their jobs; in the recent survey barely a quarter felt so comfortable.

Such anguish has grown palpable. FORTUNE magazine's career-advice columnist, Anne Fisher, calls the angst pouring in from her boomer readers "a continuing lament," and there's evidence that it will soon become operatic. From the mailbox of Fisher's website, "I'm learning that being over 40 is not only an obstacle, it's more like a brick wall," writes someone who signs himself "Not Dead Yet." Bob C. thinks "younger bosses see...older [workers] as a menace." Edward, the realist, writes, "Many of us over 40 have failed to constantly update our skill sets."

The anecdotal evidence certainly supports data that would have 3 out of 4 experienced workers, even in a full-employment economy, fearing for their jobs. Steve Harrigan, 51, of Austin, Texas, asks a question that virtually any leading-edge boomer can relate to: "Where are we?" When Harrigan is sitting in a restaurant, visiting an office or just walking down the street, he wonders, Why does it always seem he's the oldest person in view?

Want more? As unforgiving as the present has become, our future could be bleaker. It is truly stunning how financially unprepared for retirement boomers are. They don't hold nearly as much stock as their parents do, and according to Richard Hokenson, chief economist of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, when they were younger--filled, no doubt, with a confident belief in boomer immortality, or at least boomer invulnerability--they saved for retirement much less conscientiously than their Gen X counterparts are doing today. As a result, a full 40% of boomers, and 30% of those nearest to retirement, have less than $10,000 in personal savings. That's more than 30 million people who are no better prepared for retirement than they are for a couple of weeks with the family at Disneyworld.

Pensions? Once upon a time, American businesses funded what was known as defined-benefit plans; they were required to contribute whatever amount would guarantee a specific payout. But corporations like to be able to predict their future liabilities, and the defined-benefit approach has rapidly been replaced by the defined-contribution plan: employer and/or employee contributes X dollars, fund trustees invest it, and investment performance determines the payout. It's great in an up market, but, says Michael F. Carter, a benefits specialist with the Hay Group, a worldwide human-resources consultancy, "we're beginning to enter what I call the worry period." Older boomers, he says, are right to wonder "what happens if there's a correction in the stock market and it falls off 20%" without swiftly bouncing back?

From the satirical newspaper the Onion: "Long-awaited baby boomer die-off to begin soon, experts say. Before long, tens of millions of members of this irritating generation will achieve what such boomer icons as Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Timothy Leary and John Kennedy already have: death. Before long, we will live in a glorious new world in which no one will ever again have to endure tales of Joan Baez's performance at Woodstock...[T]he ravages of age will take its toll on boomer self-indulgence, and the curtain will at long last fall on what is regarded by many as the most odious generation America has ever produced."

Like all good satire, this hurts because it is, in its essence, so accurate. Where once my generation was celebrated for its commitment to peace and justice, what we've grown to be--what we always were, probably--is a generation committed to nothing more (or less) substantial than what we appear to be leaving as our signal legacy to American culture: casual Fridays.

As you read this sentence, another baby boomer is turning 50. In eight seconds, so will another, and then another, and on and on will this cascade of calendar-enforced maturity continue for the next decade and a half, an entire generation hitting the back nine and turning the world over to those who are younger, faster, fitter, more ambitious. (Even the most commonly used number--the 76 million born in the boom--is a gross underestimate: add 8 million immigrant boomers to the total.) For the present purposes, though, we're going to focus on the leading edge of the boom, those people born between 1946 and 1957 who made it to their teens before the '60s ended. We know self-indulgence better than our younger siblings do, so we're going to feel what's happening next that much more sharply. And, of course, sooner--like, tomorrow.