June 1, 2013
“I tried retirement,” Pat said. “And I just got bored.”
What retirement? Boomers turn to new ventures
An encore career. The second act. The new retirement.
Whatever you call it, baby boomers and seniors have been bitten by the entrepreneurship bug.
Amid economic and social changes, the 55- to 64-year-old age group has had the largest increase in entrepreneurial activity in the past decade, according to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a nonprofit group that promotes entrepreneurship. This trend has continued in spite of the tepid economic recovery.
“It’s a whole movement of starting your own business, no matter how small,” said Elizabeth Isele, co-founder of the nonprofit Senior Entrepreneurship Works in Washington, D.C., and New York.
Research in 2011 by Civic Ventures, a think tank on boomers, found that 1 in 4 Americans ages 44 to 70 are interested in starting businesses or nonprofit ventures in the next five to 10 years.
Even before the financial upheaval, workplace and demographic changes were fueling an entrepreneurial boom among older workers.
For starters, baby boomers represent a huge chunk of the overall population.
The Kauffman Foundation study in 2009 predicted that the U.S. might be on the verge of an entrepreneurship boom “not in spite of an aging population but because of it.”
While overall business startup activity in the U.S. dipped last year, the share of entrepreneurship among the baby boomer group has grown from 14.3 percent in 1996 to 23.4 percent last year, according to the Kauffman Foundation.
With baby boomers and seniors living longer and healthier, many are moving into second and third careers instead of retiring. The shift reflects a steady decline in lifetime employment at one company that was once commonplace, said Dane Stangler, director of research and policy at the Kauffman Foundation.
Plus, many older workers have the experience and wherewithal to start new businesses. Technology also makes it easier for them to venture out on their own.
“It’s definitely easier to strike out on your own,” Stangler said. “You can do a lot of different things, and if you’re in your 50s and 60s, you have quite a lot of social capital: large social network and lot of experience to tap into. Those are key resources for people entering self-employment or becoming entrepreneurs.”
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