A fitness trainer at the YMCA in Rochester, New York.

Marc Freedman challenged employers to invest in older adults who want meaningful work in the second half of their lives.

“Employers need to recognize, particularly those facing talent shortages, that there is more than one place to look when filling these gaps,” Freedman says in an interview in today’s online edition of The New York Times. “While many young people have an enormous amount to offer, there is another vast and growing pool of talent and commitment.

“And employers need to correct some misconceptions,” he told reporter Marci Alboher. “They often assume that people in their 50s and 60s have one foot out the door. But an accumulation of evidence supports the fact that turnover is less with this population than with young people. So it is worth investing in these individuals.”

He cited studies showing that millions of boomers want to launch second careers in areas such as education, health care, the nonprofit sector and government, as well as the need for many mature adults to continue working.

Individuals who wish to pursue such encore careers are not helped by stories that imply that the process is easy, Freedman says.

“Society is set up to make retirement happen seamlessly. But if you want to launch a significant second career in an area of social importance, you are often on your own, even though we desperately need people to move into this direction.”

Freedman said, that publishing stories with photos of a couple next to their B&B or vineyard, their dream instantly realized, “gives people who have the usual ups and downs, confusions, setbacks, a sense that they are failing because in reality it takes years.”

Alboher asked whether many people don’t really want traditional retirement, “a life of 24/7 leisure in a Sun Belt golf or tennis community?”

“The fact is that there are very few people who can afford to be retired for 30 years,” Freedman said. “What happens is that people are having false retirements. They are retiring from what they were doing in their midlife careers because they are tired, need a break, or have deferred many priorities. Then, after a year or five, they are rested and restless and looking ahead to a period that might be 20 years in duration. So what seemed like retirement was a sabbatical or hiatus as opposed to a final destination.”

Freedman called for policy changes that would create program to train older workers, allow people to buy into Medicare, give workers earlier access too tax-advantaged savings and pensions, and start a “national sabbatical.”

But Freeman said policy makers had yet to embrace the encore opportunity.

“It’s hard enough to get the candidates to talk about the hot-button issues of Social Security and Medicare,” he noted. “There is no creative policy debate around these issues. No recent candidate has embraced them. And with 10,000 boomers turning 60 every day, it’s about time.”