When it comes to escaping the grind of work, whether to tend to one’s responsibilities or to simply be, our economy offers workers few guarantees. 

A comfortable retirement isn’t in the cards for an increasing number of Americans. Insufficient Social Security and retirement benefits have swelled the ranks of the working elderly, who must stay in the workforce in order to make ends meet. A fifth of those 65 and older in the United States are employed, a rate nearly three times that of the European Union average, where public retirement benefits are stronger. 

Many workers also don’t know their schedules from one week to the next. The uncertainty generated turns the management of one’s personal life into a tightrope act. Add in the lack of any form of nationwide paid leave, and that the length of the workday hasn’t changed much in 40 years, despite advances in technology that have increased productivity, and what becomes visible is a status quo in which life outside the job does not receive its proper due.

In our final Resource Roundup of the year, read reporting in Time Magazine about older Americans’ dimming prospects of retirement. Learn about the crisis of poor work scheduling practices that Gallup identified in a recent job quality survey, then read a brief in Health Affairs on what such schedules do to people’s wellbeing. And finally, hear from our colleague Matt Helmer about the sacrifices his father made for his job, ones which took time from family and harmed his health.

Time Magazine

For Many of America’s Aging Workers, ‘Retirement Is a Distant Dream’

While some people choose to work in retirement to keep active, others do so because they can’t afford not to.

Pensions that provide a regular monthly check to retirees are largely a relic of the past. A fifth of workers over 50 lack retirement savings altogether. With the growth of the service industry as the nation’s main employer, things may get worse.

Read Alana Semuels’ reporting from Vermont on the experiences of those who can’t retire and what is being done to improve workers’ retirement prospects.

Gallup

Work Schedules Fail Millions of U.S. Employees

High-quality work schedules are those which allow workers to have some say in the hours they work, offer predictable hours, and are known to workers more than two weeks in advance. Unfortunately, few workers surveyed by Gallup in its recent American Job Quality Study — just one in three — reported having one.

That’s a problem because people with low-quality work schedules are more likely to struggle financially, and workers with lower levels of education tend to be most affected.

Learn more about what workers say about scheduling and how it affects their lives.

Health Affairs

Precarious Work Schedules And Population Health

Most workers in the US are hourly, and research has found that fewer than half know their schedule more than two weeks out. The unpredictability that results makes it difficult to manage one’s spare time. 

Chronic scheduling instability hurts people’s health, as stress, depression, and anxiety accompany such uncertainty. For workers with children, irregular schedules throw a wrench into child care arrangements. 

Read the full Health Affairs brief, by researchers from the Shift Project, for more on how scheduling affects workers’ health and the importance of enacting policies that bring them greater stability.

from aspen EOP

Fast Company

The greatest gift you can give employees this holiday season: Time and worker protections

Millions of people work for employers that give little or no time off. Growing up, EOP’s Matt Helmer saw the effects of this on his father, a coal miner who passed away in 2023. 

Writing in Fast Company, Matt describes how endlessly changing shifts stole time from his father that could have been spent with family. On top of that, mining companies often held little regard for the health of their workers. The toll of a life of physical strain and exposure to toxins took from Matt’s father the full enjoyment of his retirement years. 

Read Matt’s deeply personal call for a right to time off and labor protections that respect workers’ dignity as people.