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J.R. Whalen: This is a special edition of Your Money Briefing for Wednesday, September 27th. I'm J.R. Whalen for the Wall Street Journal. Welcome to the third installment in our special series on the 60 year career, something younger workers are likely to have to navigate. So far in our series, we've talked about the reality that the traditional retirement age of 65 isn't a reality at all.
Speaker 2: Today, most jobs are based on knowledge. So, if we look at knowledge workers in many jobs, the evidence suggests that we're peaking in our late '60s or early '70s.
J.R. Whalen: And how workers need to start financing their longer life and longer career now by taking advantage of retirement plans like 401k's.
Speaker 3: So, let's say a company offers 5% match. So, if somebody can set aside 5% of their income, we'd already talk about 10%, and that adds up over a period of time.
J.R. Whalen: But as the saying goes, money isn't everything. Today,. We'll examine how you can keep working, and working, and working, without burning out.
Shay Baker: It's okay to take a career break and enjoy what that career break offers.
Callum Borchers: You got to sort of pace yourself, right? Because if you just cook it into your '20s and '30s, then what's going to be left in the tank later on?
J.R. Whalen: Coming up, we'll talk to Wall Street Journal Columnist, Callum Borchers, about how finding work-life balance now can prevent burnout later. And we'll hear it from the head of a program that helps people reenter the workforce and make it to the finish line of a 60 year career. That's after the break.Ahhh, Graduation day. You finally have that college degree and are ready to take on the real world, but there are plenty of unknowns. Where are you going to work? Where are you going to live? Maybe how are you going to pay off your student loans? But there's another unknown that you probably haven't considered. Are you prepared to work for 60 years?
Callum Borchers: I don't think that young workers truly know what they're in for because for so many, the working world is a new experience. It's hard to imagine in concrete terms doing anything for 60 years.
J.R. Whalen: Callum Borchers writes the WSJ's On The Clock column that focuses on people's careers and their life outside of work.
Callum Borchers: It is like buying a house in a way. You signed a 30 year mortgage for this giant sum of money that sort of feels abstract. It's hard to imagine what it's going to be like to do it for 30 years and now your career for 60 years.
J.R. Whalen: But a career path that starts in your '20s and ends potentially in your '80s probably won't run along a straight line. It's more dotted. The breaks in that line are literally breaks. Taking some time away from your job, your career, people are likely going to have to step away from the workforce in order to have the stamina to tack on an extra decade or two of work later on. This falls under the category of work-life balance. A survey from Deloitte asked millennials and Gen Z what they admire most in a peer.
Callum Borchers: By head of their house or their job title or any of these sort of classic markers of success, what they most admire in Gen Z and millennials is somebody who appears to have great work-life balance. But then if you ask those same folks, well, what is most important to your own sense of self-identity? Well, the primary job runs away from the field ahead of things like hobbies, music, sports. So, there's a disconnect, right? Between what we admire in others and what we actually do ourselves that is fueled by this worry that I'm going to have to work a really long time, and so I really can't take my foot off the gas.
J.R. Whalen: So, let's say you do decide to take your foot off the gas. What do you do then? How do you fill all the time that used to be taken up by a full-time job?
Callum Borchers: It depends on what the purpose of the break is. So, if it's because you have felt a sense of burnout and you need to recharge, then the best thing to do honestly might be to truly unplug. Kind of go off the grid a little while and don't be too plugged in to what's going on in your industry. And then others consider a career break to be more of a time to build new skills, right? So, if they've worked in a certain role for a while, they're eager for a new challenge, but maybe what they need is a little bit of continuing education. So for them, a career break isn't a total unplugging. Maybe it's going back to school for a little while. Maybe not even for a degree. Maybe it's a certificate program that's going to take just several months instead of a couple of years, but they're doing something else, building a different skillset, and then they plan to reenter the workforce in a different kind of role.
J.R. Whalen: So, trying to get back in could be a daunting task. It might even have you feeling a bit like Michael Corleone from The Godfather.
Michael Corleone: Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.
J.R. Whalen: And that's where a returnship could help. A return what? You say?
Shay Baker: A returnship is a return to a field or career, but it's treated similar to an internship in the sense that it offers transitional support.
J.R. Whalen: Shay Baker is program manager of Return Utah. It aims to fill state jobs with people who've been out of the workforce for varying amounts of time.
Shay Baker: We cater to retirees, people who've taken breaks to return to school, get master's degrees, travel, serve in the military, volunteer, start a business, et cetera. You name it. Those are the people we're catering this program to and that other return to work programs are catered to. Individuals who've specifically taken a career break. A person applies for a job, and during the first 16 weeks of that job, they're in a returnship. They receive transitional support, coaching, technological training, et cetera. Returnships help you to see your career and maybe the careers of others as a long-term strategy for growth and living your best life. And I think returnships just allow you to see that career differently and to pace yourself to know that it's okay to take a break.
J.R. Whalen: And no, you don't have to get a job in state government and move to Utah for a returnship program. They might be closer than you think.
Shay Baker: They're all over the country at this point. They exist within companies like Walmart and Amazon and Goldman Sachs and Northrop Grumman and Pepsi, et cetera. And now they're starting to grow within state organizations.
J.R. Whalen: The programs vary in length. Some are 16 weeks, while others can be as long as six months. It's common for the programs to be paid and aimed at people who've been out of the workforce for a certain amount of time, often two years. But with leaving and coming back, is there a risk of losing ground on your career and salary track?
Shay Baker: This is actually a fear that a lot of returners have is that you wonder if you return to work if you're going to have to start and climb the career ladder all the way from the bottom. Again, nobody wants to do that.
J.R. Whalen: So, to cope with that, she says a lot of these programs are aimed at getting people back right where they left off.
Shay Baker: Right now, we have a returner who took a multiple year career break to care for children. During that time, she got her master's degree. She was worried that employers would only see her as her former self, like her pre-care break self. When a returner knows that they were chosen for the position based on who they are, regardless of their career break, they're able to take a deep breath, and then they're able to focus their energy on something different.
J.R. Whalen: And keeping your salary momentum is key because it means you might not have to dip into your retirement savings. Remember what WSJ Retirement Reporter Anne Tergesen told us about that last week.
Anne Tergesen: The value if you can of deferring or delaying social security is huge. For every year that you delay, your social security benefits get adjusted upwards often by as much as 8% per year.
J.R. Whalen: So, it is possible to take a break from your career in this extra long path we're on. In fact, Shay Baker did it. She's a returner herself, as she calls it. She took a career break to raise her kids.
Shay Baker: I was terrified to leave because I left at 30 and I was thinking to myself, okay, when I return at 40, I will have lost a lot of the technological skills I need.
J.R. Whalen: And she was worried about losing her career and salary momentum.
Shay Baker: I remember wondering how I would pivot careers, how I would get back in, how I would make this work for me. And really being concerned, I think if I knew that returnships existed, if I knew, hey, I'm going to work for 60 years and there's all these programs to help ease me back in, I wouldn't have had any fear or trepidation, and I think I would've taken that career break much more willingly. One of the benefits of returnships is you enter at mid-level, and while your pay may not be what it was when you left, it's at least mid-level pay. Sometimes returners worry that they may have lost skills or that they're irrelevant or that they're rusty, and so that they feel a lot of times like they may not be a good option for those mid-level jobs, when in reality they are. They just need someone to take a chance on them.
J.R. Whalen: So, getting back into the swing of a job will be a challenge. The technology may be different. The work culture, schedule, a lot can change, and having that uncertainty of how a job will be when you come back to it is normal. Here's our columnist, Callum Borchers, again.
Callum Borchers: There is a chance that when you come back, you are going to feel like you missed out and you're not maybe part of the team in the way that you were before. If you can accept that that is a possibility and be comfortable with the chance that you might have to move on after the fact, then it can be well worth it.
J.R. Whalen: In the end, a 60 year career isn't new. There've been people who've worked well into their '70s, '80s, and beyond. But the very real prospect of a 60 year work timeline across an entire generation and generations to come is uncharted territory. So, some are pointing to the idea that it might be time for people to draw their own map.
Shay Baker: Your career is a long game, and the whole purpose of a career is to provide funds for you to live, but it's also to enhance your life, right? To accomplish things, to learn, to grow, to push yourself.
J.R. Whalen: Working full speed ahead for six decades isn't the only option for all those added working years.
Callum Borchers: It's something that you can step away from every now and then. I think that that becomes an easier pill to swallow, to think about having to spend 60 years in a career that isn't going to be all consuming, but that you can kind of shape and mold around the rest of your life as well.
J.R. Whalen: That's it for Your Money Briefing. Today's show was produced by Ariana Aspuru. It was mixed by Michael Laval. I'm your host, J.R. Whalen. Jonathan Sanders is our booking producer. Our Supervising Producer is Melanie Roy. Aisha Al-Muslim is our development producer. Scott Saloway and Chris Zinsli are our deputy editors. And Philana Patterson is the Wall Street Journal's Head of News Audio. We'll be back with a new episode tomorrow. Thanks for listening.
