In fact, the impulse to work is so basic that the Fourth Commandment (Third for Catholics) is to take off one day a week. Not working for a day is right up there with not murdering, not committing adultery, and not stealing. We tend to assume that most people want off—waiting all week for the Friday afternoon whistle so they can stream out of work. To be sure, many jobs are terrible—even life-threatening—and people reasonably can’t wait to get home. But as work overall has become more managerial, consulting, and software-oriented—and as manufacturing jobs have been on the decline—a lot of people have changed their attitude toward work, and the number of workaholics has skyrocketed. How many times have you heard the old saying that no one ever lay on his deathbed wishing he had spent more time at the office? And yet, a lot of people are doing just that. The sandwich generation is going to be in for a shock when they call their 70-year-old parents at the office and find they are just too busy to babysit the grandkids.

  Add to America’s general obsession with work the fact that it is now the baby boomer generation who is nearing 65, and it becomes clear that the traditional idea of “retirement”—with its gold watch, rocking chair, and golf course—is just about ready for retirement itself.

  Boomers reinvented youth in the 1960s and economic success in the 1980s; they are not about to do their senior years by someone else’s formula. According to a 2005 survey by Merrill Lynch, more than 3 in 4 boomers say they have no intention of seeking a traditional retirement. Rather, they look ahead to their twenty more years (when Social Security was created in 1935, a 65-year-old could expect just thirteen more years)—and they say Bring It On. Some want to keep their health insurance, or have enough funds for the extra years—but more of the boomers surveyed said they wanted to keep working in order to stay mentally and physically active and to stay connected to people.

  And modern changes to the workplace environment have made these desires possible. When more jobs required physical labor, older people who had injuries or pain might have been at a disadvantage. But in the Information Age—well, old folks have more information than anyone. Anyway, drugs like Celebrex have enabled millions of Americans to keep on working despite their pain. And if older workers do end up with physical impairments, the Americans with Disabilities Act has helped make their workplaces far friendlier.

  The Working Retired mean huge things for America. As a purely numerical matter, they mean a much bigger workforce than anyone had projected. Every year, a little over 2 million Americans turn 65. If just half of them decided to keep working, that would be more than 1 million unexpected participants in the labor force—or almost an additional 1 percent of current workers.

  That has enormous implications. First, it puts the squeeze on younger employees, who have been waiting their turn to take the reins. If suddenly people become managers and vice presidents at 40, instead of 35, will they really stick around and wait? If they do, will that breed a more passive kind of leader—because the more aggressive ones will have broken free to start their own ventures?

  It has even bigger implications for certain industries. Lower-income older workers tend to work retail, often part-time; higher-income older workers tend to become consultants and independent contractors, either in the field they once mastered or in a hobby they love. And they are far more likely to run their own show: Older workers make up 7 percent of independent contractors, versus only 2.5 percent of workers in traditional arrangements. But either way, expect an easier time for the HR departments of Home Depot and CVS, as well as many technical fields.

  In all industries, though, employers need to adjust. The Merrill Lynch study found that very few companies are focused on Aging Workers, preoccupied as they are with hiring younger and healthier workers in order to cut benefit costs. But when it comes to benefit packages, current employee priorities like maternity leave and child care may have to compete with “winter-off” options and prescription drug coverage. Just as the women’s movement forced new options for part-time and home-based work, expect new workplace options for cyclical and other kinds of nontraditional work.

  I don’t envy the manufacturers of golf clubs or the builders of golf courses—the projections of retirees circling the courses all day are likely going to fall short and create a glut. At the same time, the business center may become the busiest place in “retirement communities.” And look for growing markets for computers, cell phones, and mobile devices tailored for seniors, as well as a surge in use of reading glasses.

  The Working Retired will also affect the political landscape. Older citizens vote, and working men and women retain some of their interest in the economy when they take home a paycheck. Older voters have been becoming Values Voters—especially the grumpy old men. Keeping them in the workforce may keep them voting more on the basis of what’s good for jobs and the economy and less on cultural issues.

  And look for new legislation and litigation, especially new age discrimination laws. Since 1978, it’s been illegal to force workers out before age 70, and since 1986 there’s been no compulsory retirement of any form. But currently you get no additional advantage for deferring your Social Security payouts beyond age 70. Why not 73?

  And what about subtler age discrimination? Will older workers be forgiven for the little extra time they may need to get the same tasks done? Will it become a “hostile work environment” when the office competitions involve YouTube contests, instead of basketball pools?

  The commercial implications of the Working Retired have scarcely been imagined. “Senior” product merchants are still largely focused on golf clubs and walkers. How about “octogenomic” office chairs to accommodate arthritis, back pain, and knee replacements? More nap facilities, for the older people who came to work at 7:00, but need a little shut-eye from 2:00 to 2:30? Defibrillators in every workplace hallway? Sodium-free foods in the office cafeteria?

  The Working Retired will also have a big impact on family life. It’s unclear how wives will react when suddenly men choose to keep on working instead of spending their Golden Years with them. (Is that insulting? Or is it a huge relief?) And what about grown children? They can no longer count on their parents to pick up the babysitting slack, since their parents are working just as hard as they are—which suggests that the paid child care industry will grow even larger.

  And there are public health implications. More than 1 million extra workers per year means significantly more commuter congestion on the roads. And accidents—drivers 65 and older are involved in 7 percent of all traffic accidents, and 10 percent of all fatal accidents.

  But the really, really big significance of the Working Retired is that, basically, everything we have been predicting for the last decade or so, regarding the collapse of Social Security, was wrong. There won’t, in fact, be ten retirees for every worker, because the retirees will be working, too. The enormous Social Security burdens we’ve been haranguing about will be reduced, to some degree, by this trend—and largely on the part of people who want to do it. According to Eugene Steuerle, an economist with the Urban Institute, if everyone worked just one year beyond expected retirement, we’d completely offset the anticipated shortfall between benefits and taxes in the old age insurance portion of Social Security. If everyone worked five more years, the overall additional taxes to the government alone would be greater than the shortfall.

  Could there be a much larger implication than that?

  Well—maybe; perhaps the Working Retired will actually extend life itself. Plenty of studies have shown that an active body and mind are key to extending the healthy years. Are we only at the tip of the iceberg for greater life expectancy? Might more and more of us get to 100—not from radical new diets and exercise plans, but from punching the clock well past 65?

  And, maybe, the Working Retired could save the family—hard as the trend may seem to swallow at first for spurned spouses and indignant grown children. If a person can really work until 90, might that mean a whole new pressure release valve on the work-family dilemma? Could Moms (or Dads) now mainly raise kids from age 23 to 43—and then spend 50 years at work? Surveys of college freshmen today tell us that their highest priorities in life are to make a lot of money and raise a family. Can they—at long last—actually do both if suddenly “the working years” are twenty years longer than they used to be?

  What used to be the Golden Years are now, in the minds of aging Americans, Golden Opportunities. Yes, this development could cause more traffic accidents, and send the younger generation scurrying to independent ventures—but it could conceivably also avert America’s looming Social Security crisis, extend life, and rescue the American family.

  Extreme Commuters

  There is perhaps no more common experience in America than the daily ritual of going back and forth to work. About 150 million of us work, and only 3 percent of us work from home. So pretty much everyone else—something like 145 million people—leave home every morning, travel to a workplace, and make our way back again at night.

  Years ago, there were studies that said people wouldn’t tolerate a commute longer than forty-five minutes. Well, we’re inching there: Our current average is now 25 minutes, up almost 20 percent since 1980. According to a 2005 Business Week report, in 1990 only 24 percent of all workers left their home counties to get to the office. Now, 50 percent of new workers do.

  The greater distance between jobs and workers is all about jobs leaving cities for suburbs, and workers leaving suburbs for “exurbs.” It’s like a big chase to the outer rings, with more and more people paying the price in commuting. But as a result, in 2000, almost 10 million Americans traveled more than an hour to get to work—up from fewer than 7 million ten years before.

  And at the extreme of this trend are—aptly named by the Census Bureau—“Extreme Commuters,” people who travel at least 90 minutes each way to get to work. In 2000, there were 3.4 million such commuters in America, almost double the number from ten years before.

  Extreme Commuting is enough of a phenomenon that in the spring of 2006, Midas Muffler held a contest to reward America’s Longest Commuter. Attracting thousands of entries, Midas gave the prize to David Givens of Mariposa, California, who drives 372 miles round-trip every day to his job at Cisco Systems in San Jose. (He leaves his house every morning at 4:30 a.m., makes one stop for coffee, and is in his cubicle at Cisco by 7:45. At 5:00 p.m., he reverses the trip, getting home around 8:30.)

  Source: U.S. Census, Journey to Work, 2000

  Who are these 3.4 million Extreme Commuters, and why are they working so far from home?

  For the most part, people who live far from work can’t afford to live near it. New-home prices have nearly tripled since the mid-1980s, and now average almost $300,000. Folks just can’t buy houses in the major metropolitan areas where they work. According to Census data, the state that saw the largest increase in commute times between 2002 and 2003 was West Virginia—where housing is still affordable, but more lucrative work in Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, and Ohio draws workers out of the state from 9 to 5 (or, if you count the commute, from 4:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.).

  Other Extreme Commuters do it for the quality of life. As land prices decline the farther the land is from cities, people are deciding to endure the long commute in exchange for a bigger house, bigger lawn, less gridlock, and less crime. Not to mention nature. Something like 25,000 people from the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania commute for hours into New York City every weekday—but on the weekends, they have hiking, skiing, and cool mountain air.

  And some dual-earner couples are becoming Extreme Commuters not so much for economic or lifestyle reasons, but rather for logistical ones. As the number of two-worker households increases, so do the chances that one or both will need to trek to work. Princeton, New Jersey, famous for the university, has also become a popular suburb for couples who need to commute to both New York City and Philadelphia.

  Indeed, the worst commutes in the nation are in the New York and Washington, D.C., metropolitan areas—at an average of thirty-four and thirty-three minutes, respectively. It’s serious enough that these commutes, plus high gas prices, are pushing people back to mass transit.

  But still, over 3 million people—the magic 1 percent for a microtrend—are waking up with the stars and crossing state lines and even weather zones to get to work, and public policymakers, public health officials, and the business world may want to take note.

  First of all, this is a group that cares intensely about gas prices. A whopping 76 percent of all commuters drive alone to work, and that figure is presumably even higher among Extreme Commuters. (It’s really hard to rally a carpool at 4:30 a.m., or for your same 125-mile route.) Gas prices can make or break this group’s careers. Mr. Givens, the winner of Midas Muffler’s Longest Commute award, said that when he won, he was spending about $800 per month on gas. An Extreme Commuter in North Carolina bristled when President George W. Bush said in his 2006 State of the Union address that Americans were “addicted to oil.” Are we, she demanded, or are we just trying to get to work? People in the cities may not mind a gasoline tax, but these 3 million people won’t be voting for a gas tax candidate anytime soon.

  Extreme Commuters are also at greater risk for dangerous behavior like road rage, as well as health problems. Dr. John H. Casada, a specialist in road stress, has said that the longer people’s commutes are, the more likely they are to suffer road rage—which can lead not only to violence, but also heart attacks, strokes, and ulcers.

  Longer commutes are also linked to obesity. Researchers at Georgia Tech have found that every thirty minutes spent driving increases your risk of becoming obese by 3 percent. In a 2005 ABC/Washington Post poll on traffic, 4 in 10 drivers said that while in traffic jams, they eat.

  Robert Putnam’s 2000 book Bowling Alone notably found that for every extra ten minutes you commute, you have 10 percent less time for family and community (unless, I guess, you take your kids with you to day care at your workplace). But since many Extreme Commuters signed on to the bargain in pursuit of small-town life, that seems particularly unfortunate, or particularly self-sacrificing. Many Extreme Commuters do this for their families—to give them a better life with better schools. Others wait for the weekends to enjoy the reason they drive all this way during the week.

  The Extreme Commuter group also has important commercial implications. According to a Newsweek report in 2006, fast food restaurants are coming out with whole meals that fit in cup holders, and some cars are now outfitted with more cup holders than seats. Gas stations are putting touch-screen menus at the pump, so people can order sandwiches while they’re filling the tank and have them ready for pickup when it’s time to drive away. Satellite navigation systems now come with real-time traffic options, to help drivers avoid gridlock. The next battleground, say observers, is luxury seats. People who spend more than three hours per day behind the wheel are likely to be very interested in extra-comfort features like back massages. (So far, no one has developed a sanitary, socially acceptable, and portable car toilet.)

  Finally, Extreme Commuters are a group with serious time on their hands. Some audio companies claim you need just sixteen hours of their language tapes to go from zero Spanish to a full foundation. At that rate, Extreme Commuters listening in their cars can habla español in a week without giving up any other activities. And after a couple months, they could be U.N. translators, if their current jobs don’t work out.

  Or books on tape. Extreme Commuters are the transportation equivalent of speed readers. They could get through War and Peace in twelve days, or The Da Vinci Code in five.

  Lyndon Johnson said he was declaring war on poverty and beginning massive urban renewal because, he predicted, 95 percent of Americans were going to live in cities. But in fact, people have spread out across the country to suburbs and exurbs faster than anyone could have predicted. (This just proves how hard it is to make assumptions about what America will look like fifty years from now—while you’re focused on a few big trends, other microtrends seep in and upset your expectations.) Employers who moved to the suburbs did get closer to some of their workforce. But for a whole group of other workers, all their employers’ relocation did was encourage them to move farther out—suggesting that for a lot of people, the most important thing is a house, a yard, and a quieter life, no matter what the cost in money or time.

  The bottom line is that more and more Americans are on the road—but not so much like Jack Kerouac, looking to find themselves. More likely, they are looking for a cup of coffee and a to-go danish, hoping the gridlock will be bearable today, and knowing that they’ll take the exact same route tomorrow.

  THE INTERNATIONAL PICTURE

  When the European Economic Community (EEC) was founded in 1957, its mission was to tear down trade barriers and ensure that all Europeans could travel freely among the member countries. Little did founder Jean Monnet know that such “free travel” would give rise to today’s European Extreme Commuter—and even its jet-setting Mega-Commuter.

  Within Europe, the British win the prize for the longest average commute, at forty-five minutes—a good twenty minutes longer than the average commute in the U.S. The overall average commute in the European Union (the EEC’s successor) is thirty-eight minutes, with Italy clocking in at twenty-three and Germany at forty-four.

  But the interesting story lies not only in the tedious commute time, but in the sheer number of miles that many commuters voluntarily cover. Fully half of passengers in the Chunnel’s high-speed train, the Eurostar, which travels over 200 miles between France and England, are commuters—mainly people who live in France and work in London. (In 2007, for the first time ever, a French presidential candidate held an election rally outside France—trying to appeal to the nearly half-million French citizens who live and/or work in London.)