More than one-quarter of Canadian baby boomers plan to delay retirement because of the current economic downturn, and that proportion is even higher among business owners, according to a survey of workers between the ages 50 and 69.

An Ipsos Reid poll, conducted for the Royal Bank of Canada, showed 28 per cent of boomers had put off retirement because of the economy. Among those owning a business, 37 per cent were pushing back retirement.

Of the respondents who were delaying their retirement because of the economy, 43 per cent said they were postponing it by one to two years, 37 per cent were pushing it ahead by three to five years, nine per cent said the delay would be more than five years, and three per cent said it would be less than a year.

Barbara Jaworski, CEO of the Toronto-based Workplace Institute, which specializes in the recruitment and retention of mature workers, said she’s not surprised so many people have put off retirement. She said only about 30 per cent of Canadians have pension plans with defined benefits, meaning most rely on retirement funds that have been negatively affected by the recent stock market downturn.

But she also noted a trend among those approaching the traditional retirement age to reconsider whether it’s something they really want to do.

“People are really beginning to re-evaluate retirement and ask: Retire to what?” Jaworski said. “If you’re 55 years old … what are you retiring to? You’ve got another 30 years of life.”

A number of questions in the survey revealed a higher tendency to delay or avoid retirement among business owners. For instance, 32 per cent entrepreneurs said they would never fully retire, compared with 13 per cent of the boomer population.

Also, 50 per cent of the business owners in this survey said they expected to be semi-retired or working part-time at the age of 65, compared with 40 per cent of boomers in general.

Jaworski said many business owners depend largely on the eventual sale of their business to support their retirement plans, and “this is not an economic climate where people are going to get, necessarily, a great dollar for their business.”

The survey included 3,113 Canadian respondents of boomer age, with assets of at least $100,000, in an online panel conducted between Oct. 16 and 23, 2008.

Publication Date: September 24, 2009
Publication Source: Ottawa Citizen
Author: Derek Abma