PITTSBURGH — One collective memory that separates the older generation of workers from everyone else is that of a product that was once ubiquitous: carbon paper. The “cc” line on modern email is a reference to a carbon copy — the type created on a typewriter by inserting carbon paper between sheets of plain white paper.
The percentage of workers older than 65 in the labor force — most of whom remember the days when running an office was quite labor intensive because of things like typing those carbon copies — was higher in 2013 than at any time since 1962.
Since the turn of the century, older workers have been coming back — or staying in — the workforce as retirement benefits have been cut and pensions eroded. In addition, life spans have lengthened and health has improved for many.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 18.7 percent of Americans older than 65 were either working or looking for work last year.
To get a perspective on that: in the late 1940s, labor force participation for that age group was around 27 percent. By the 1980s and 1990s, that rate had declined, hovering around 11 and 12 percent.
Been there, done that
The young people from the offices of the 1960s and 1970s have experiences that make what could be a crisis for today’s young employees just another workday. They’ve already been there and done that.
Paul Singer was sitting in a 12th floor conference room of the glass Reed Smith high-rise in downtown Pittsburgh recently, remembering the Reed Smith law firm where he started. The office had been in a different building and the place was filled with people whose job it was to get legal papers researched, written, typed, filed and sent.
That work can now all be done by one lawyer.
Matter of judgment
Singer said computers, which give lawyers the ability to do research on the Internet and file papers electronically, have leveled the playing field between small and large firms. They all have access to research and filings quickly.
What computers do not provide, the 71-year-old attorney said, is the judgment needed to effectively handle a case.
“I can get down to the substance very quickly and see what the likelihood of success can be or will be,” agreed Fred Colen, a 67-year-old intellectual property attorney.
Both men admit that they were lucky to have chosen a field where they can keep working well past normal retirement age. That’s a good thing, Singer said, because he feels like he was a good lawyer in his 30s and 40s, but he really hit his stride in his mid-50s in his corporate reorganizations specialty.
Colen said the only thing that he is not as good at as the younger lawyers is handling the technology used in place of slides and boards during trials now.
If Elizabeth Behrend needed a good reason to stop going into the office, the truck that hit the 90-year-old probably provided the best one.
Before she married, Behrend was a chemist who worked during World War II and held two patents related to synthetic rubber for tires. She became a legal administrator when her husband graduated from law school and needed help running a law office.
In June, Behrend was heading home from the firm when she was hit by a pickup truck. The accident, which was captured by a camera on a bus, threw her up into the air. She landed on the pavement and then flipped onto her other side.
Her right arm was broken so badly the doctors considered amputation. She was hospitalized until mid-July and has been in physical therapy for her arm and for a head injury ever since.
In September, she started to come back to work to the firm she and her husband started in 1966 and that her children still run. “They told me my mail was piling up,” she said.
She now works two days a week, managing meetings, handling paperwork and checking on an apartment complex she manages outside the city.
When asked why she still comes to work, she answered the question with a question: “What else would I do? I have friends in the nursing home. They play cards.”
She is more worried about whether she should stay in her home than about whether she should retire.
Behrend continues to come downtown — her grandson drives her — and she is always keeping her eyes open for better office space for the firm and planning renovations to the apartment complex she owns.
“Why not?” she said. “It’s not heavy lifting and I seem to have most of my faculties.”