Older Workers Stress Less
(Ivanhoe Newswire) â Younger employees may need a lesson on stress-relief from their older peers.
A new report from the University of Michigan finds older workers generally have low levels of work-related stress.
By the year 2010, middle-aged and older workers are expected to outnumber younger employees. That has employers concerned about the physical and emotional well-being of older workers.
Study participants ages 53 to 85 reported different kinds of job stressors. All of them worked at least 20 hours per week. On average, they had about 14 years of education.
Results show over half agreed or strongly agreed they have competing demands made on them at work; 47-percent said time pressures were a source of job stress. Researchers were surprised only 19-percent said they have poor job security.
âGiven what we know about the extent of age discrimination at work and the current economic climate regarding unemployment, this is a surprisingly low number,â researcher Gwenith Fisher, Quinnipiac University, was quoted as saying.
Other findings include 15-percent of older workers reported their jobs often or almost always interfered with their personal lives and two percent said their personal lives interfered with work.
Researchers say many older workers are empty-nesters so they donât have the same work-personal conflicts younger workers deal with such as juggling responsibilities to their children along with their jobs and personal needs.
The report finds those with less job stress are more satisfied with their life and are overall in better physical Men’s health compared with those who have higher levels of job stressors.
For those with work-related stress, Fisher recommends getting enough sleep, exercising regularly, and active time-management.
This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, which offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, click on: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.
SOURCE: 60th Annual Meeting of the Gerontological Society of America in San Francisco, California, Nov. 16-20, 2007