ABSTRACT
Most companies, especially large ones, still assume that age sixty-five is the normal retirement age for managers and executives. But more and more of them, especially in middle-management ranks and in highly specialized work, take early retirement, some as early as age fifty-two. An even larger and faster-growing group is beginning to exercise the legal right (of all but a small group of executives in “decision-making positions” with very large retirement pensions) to delay retirement until age seventy. And the compulsory retirement of federal employees and of employees in California who aren't decision-making executives with very large pensions isn't permitted anymore at any age. Therefore, unless the employer plans for the retirement of aging executives, he is likely to find that the people he would most like to keep are the ones taking early retirement while the ones he would most like to get rid of are staying on the payroll until age seventy and beyond.
