How has the current economy affected encore career interest and plans for encore careers?

With support from MetLife Foundation and Civic Ventures, researchers at Penn Schoen Berland surveyed nearly 2,500 Americans ages 44 to 70 to find out.

The resulting study, Encore Career Choices: Purpose, Passion and a Paycheck in a Tough Economy, shows that boomers have tempered their expectations, at the same time exhibiting resilience and an unwillingness to give up on efforts to create a better world for future generations.

A few key stats:

• The number of people in encore careers for the greater good is up, from 8.4 million in 2008 to 9 million in 2011.
• About 31 million people in the same age group are interested in encore careers of their own. That means, 40 million people – or 40 percent of the 100 million Americans ages 44 to 70 – are either in or interested in encore careers.
• Half of Americans ages 44 to 70 say they are very concerned that the state of the economy makes this a difficult time to make a change to an encore career. Still, 25 percent of those interested in encore careers say they are very likely to make the switch in the next five years.
• A majority of those who are very interested in encore careers (62 percent) say their interest has grown in the past three years.
• Concern about future generations is high. Nearly three in four respondents (73 percent) expect that children in the U.S. will grow up to be worse off than people are now. Nearly as many (70 percent) say it is very important to them personally to leave the world a better place.

For more information, check out:

• The news release
• Key facts from the research (PDF)
• The complete report (PDF)
• Research methods (PDF)
• The research toplines for the telephone survey (PDF) and the online survey (PDF)

For information on encore entrepreneurs, culled from the same research, click here.