好英语网退休再就业：老年人改变人生轨迹的新潮流
When 66-year-old Londoner Sylvia Haller was laid off in February, it wasn’t just her income that took a hit. It was her self-esteem.
今年2月，66岁的伦敦人哈勒（Sylvia Haller）遭到解雇。然而，她失去的不只是收入，自尊心也备受打击。
“I had this feeling like, ‘I’m too old,’” she says. “‘Nobody wants to employ me anymore.’” She’d taken pride in her work installing home improvements for elderly and disabled residents in Hackney. Losing that job was “pretty traumatic”.
她说：“我有一种感觉，‘我太老了，没人想雇我’。”哈勒之前的工作是为伦敦哈克尼区的老年人和残疾人安装家居及改造设备。失去这份一直引以为豪的工作使她“十分痛苦”。
But Haller’s pension was small and she wasn’t ready to retire. So she pulled herself together and began wading through online classifieds. But, she says, “I didn’t feel confident enough to go and apply for anything.”
哈勒的退休金很少，也没有为退休生活做任何准备，于是她打起精神，开始在网上浏览招聘信息。她说，“不管找什么工作，我一点信心也没有。”
When a friend told her about TaskRabbit, an app that allows workers to hawk all kinds of services – hands-on jobs like assembling furniture or sillier tasks like waiting in line for novelty breakfast foods – she was intrigued. She set up an account on her phone – it took her a while to get the hang of the platform – and lined up customers for a variety of different jobs.
一位朋友向她推荐了“跑腿兔”（TaskRabbit），她对此很感兴趣。“跑腿兔”是一款应用程序，用户可以在这个平台上兜售各种各样的服务——比如操作性强的动手组装家具或者排队买网红早餐之类的琐事。哈勒随即注册了账户，花了一段时间熟悉平台后，为客户完成了各种不同的工作。
Opting in
自由职业是一种选择
The ‘gig economy’ has exploded in recent years. Companies including the Berlin-based Delivery Hero, which hires drivers to drop off food across Europe, Asia and Latin America; Didi Chuxing, a carpooling app so powerful in China it toppled Uber’s attempt at expansion; and TaskRabbit are upending the relationship between employees and employers, and changing the composition of a day’s work.
近年来，“零工经济”迅猛发展。总部位于柏林的“外卖超人”（Delivery Hero）聘用司机在欧洲、亚洲和拉丁美洲等地送餐；“滴滴出行”（Didi Chuxing）是中国的一款拼车软件，发展势头十分强劲，甚至使优步（Uber）的扩张计划化为泡影；“跑腿兔”颠覆了雇员和雇主之间的关系，改变了人们的日常工作。
In a 2018 trend report, researchers at Deloitte estimate 77 million people within Europe, India, and the United States formally identify themselves as freelancers. In the US alone, 3.7 million Americans were working on-demand in 2016; an updated forecast from Intuit and Emergent Research suggests that this number will surge to 9.2 million in 2021. And research by Kelly Outsourcing & Consulting Group suggests that the gig economy is also booming in the Asia Pacific region, where 84% of hiring managers say they employ gig workers.
2018年，德勤（Deloitte）的研究人员在一份趋势报告中估计：在欧洲、印度和美国，有7700万人自认为是自由职业者。2016年，仅在美国，就有370万人按需工作。据财捷公司和Emergent Research的最新预测显示，这个数字将在2021年激增至920万。凯利外包咨询集团（Kelly Outsourcing & Consulting Group）的研究表明，亚太地区的零工经济也在蓬勃发展，84%的招聘经理表示会雇佣零工。
For most of those workers, freelancing is a choice: only a small minority – 11% – of the more than 6,000 workers in the Intuit study said they were unable to find full-time jobs. They opted into the gig economy in the hope of exerting more control over their careers and, in an unpredictable, ever-changing economy, diversifying the sources of their income.
对这些员工中的大多数来说，自由职业是一种选择。财捷公司研究的6000多名员工中，只有一小部分人（11%）说他们找不到全职工作。这些人之所以选择投身零工经济是希望更好地掌握自己的职业生涯，使收入在这样一个不可预测、不断变化的经济环境里更加多样化。
Finding meaning
寻找人生意义
Gig work is often portrayed as a young person’s game – the purview of indecisive millennials who can’t commit to a ‘real’ career path or who graduated into the recession and never landed a full-time job. At the least, on-demand work seems to require a degree of energy and technological savvy typically associated with youth.
人们总是觉得只有年轻人才会去打零工，因为这些优柔寡断的千禧一代没办法投身于“真正的”职业中，又或者一毕业就碰上了经济大衰退找不到全职工作，而且随需应变的工作似乎最需要年轻人特有的旺盛精力及悟性。
But almost one-third – 31% – of Americans who work exclusively in the gig economy are baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1965. That distribution isn’t unique to the US (although it hasn’t been as extensively studied worldwide). Researchers at McKinsey Global Institute, in a report which included Spain, Germany, France, Sweden, the UK and the US, found that more than three-quarters of the independent work force was 25 or older. Many are discovering that they don’t have enough money to stop working when they expected to; according to the Intuit and Emergent report, about half of American baby boomers have less than $100,000 in retirement funds.
但是，专门打零工的美国人中有约三分之一（31%）是1946年至1965年间出生的婴儿潮一代。这种现象并非美国独有（尽管目前还没有全球范围内的研究）。麦肯锡全球研究所（McKinsey Global Institute）的研究人员在一份覆盖西班牙、德国、法国、瑞典、英国和美国的报告中发现，超过四分之三的独立员工年龄在25岁或以上。许多人发现自己的钱根本没办法支撑退休后的生活。根据财捷公司和Emergent的报告，美国婴儿潮时期出生的人当中，约有一半人的退休基金不足10万美元。
But their motives are more than monetary. Boomers in the work force – compared to millennials and Gen X-ers – were least likely to be struggling financially and most likely to say they enjoyed their work. Among those 55 and older, 32% said they were compelled, at least in part, by a desire to be around “interesting people” (compared to just 15% of workers overall).
但他们之所以打零工不仅仅是为了钱。与千禧一代和X一代相比，婴儿潮出生的劳动力最不可能陷入财务困境，也最可能享受自己的工作。在55岁及以上的人群中，32%的人表示他们至少在一定程度上是为了结识“有趣的人”（全职员工中这一比例仅15%）。
“To not know what kind of client you’re going to meet – it’s quite exciting,” says Haller. She recalls assembling a bedframe for a young fashion student, whose flat “in the deepest east London”, accessible only by “small cobbled roads” and “black iron stairs”, was littered with “sewing machines, lots of fabrics and clothes everywhere”.
“这份工作很刺激，因为你不知道自己会遇到什么样的客户，”哈勒说。她回忆起帮一名年轻学生组装床架的经历：她的公寓位于“伦敦东部最偏僻的地方”，只能通过狭窄的鹅卵石路和黑漆漆的铁楼梯进去，屋子里到处都是缝纫机、面料和衣服。
Haller and her peers are onto something profound. According to Sigmund Freud, meaningful work is one of the two prerequisites of a happy life. (The other is love.) Our jobs can help us connect with our communities, feel a sense of fulfilment and even extend our lives; some researchers suggest a link between early retirement and early death.
哈勒和她的同事们正在做一些有意义的事情。弗洛伊德（Sigmund Freud）曾说过，有意义的工作是幸福生活的两个先决条件之一（另一个是爱）。工作可以帮助我们融入社会，给予我们成就感，甚至还能延年益寿。一些研究人员认为提前退休和早逝有关系。
Catching a second wind
牢牢抓住第二次机会
For boomers who worked in physically demanding fields, digital gig work can be a relief.
对于那些在体力要求很高的领域工作的婴儿潮一代来说，数字零工是一种解脱。
68岁的海斯职业生涯的大部分时间都投身于美国的油气行业，但是后来他在“5美元服务区”网站上获得了第一份配音工作
Jerry Nelson, who lives in Argentina, loved being a photojournalist. But at 62, he says he’s “too old to charge into oak trees [and] hang out with drug cartels... My bones just aren't as strong.” Instead, he writes blog posts and marketing copy for clients he finds through Fiverr, a Tel Aviv-based platform that connects freelance workers with clients all over the world. “It’s been a phenomenal year,” Nelson says. “I don't have to maintain a website. I don't have to scrape and scratch for clients.”
住在阿根廷的纳尔逊（Jerry Nelson）很喜欢当摄影记者。但现年62岁的他表示，自己太老了，不能冲进橡树林和贩毒集团混在一起。骨头架子都松了。他在“5美元服务区”（Fiverr）为客户撰写博客和营销文案。“今年非比寻常，”纳尔逊说，“我不需要再维护网站，也不用看客户脸色了。”
The flexible schedule afforded by gig work may be especially appealing to boomers with family commitments. By using TaskRabbit Haller managed to keep her income stable, though she spends less time working – instead of clocking in from 08:00 to 17:00, she does “two hours here, three there, the odd Saturday. It gives me a lot more time to be home,” she says. “I’ve got two teenage boys. I’m quite glad I have more time for them.”
打零工的弹性工作时间特别吸引那些对家庭有责任感的婴儿潮一代。哈勒“跑腿兔”收入稳定，但实际上她花在工作上的时间比以前更少了。她的工作时间并非朝九晚五，而是“在这里工作2小时，在那里工作3小时，偶尔在周六工作”。“这样，我呆在家里的时间更多。”她说。“我有两个十几岁的儿子。我很高兴有更多的时间陪他们。”
For other boomers, gig work is a way to finally pursue their passions. American Dan Hays, 68, spent most of his career in the oil and gas industries. In 2015, he had a fateful phone conversation with a client who complimented his voice – a smooth baritone with subtle Texas twang – and suggested he’d be good at voiceovers. Hays signed up for Fiverr and booked his first voiceover acting job. “The things I was doing in oil and gas and real estate – I could do them well, but they didn’t feed my spirit. It was very competitive, very stressful. At a certain point, I said, ‘I want to try something different.’”
对于婴儿潮时期出生的人来说，打零工是追求梦想的一种方式。68岁的美国人海斯（Dan Hays）将自己大部分时间都奉献给了石油和天然气行业。2015年，他与一位客户进行了一次极其重要的电话会谈，这位客户称赞他的嗓音——带点德州口音的流畅男中音，并提议他去配音。海斯在“五美元服务区”注册了账号，并接到了第一份配音工作。“我在石油、天然气和房地产领域做得风生水起，但并不能让我精神振奋。因为这些行业竞争非常激烈，压力很大。我想尝试不一样的东西。”
Hays has since expanded his Fiverr offerings to freelance copywriting and scriptwriting. “I’ve been a writer since I was a kid,” he said, “and I love writing.”
自那以后，海斯在“五美元服务区”的工作扩展到自由撰稿和编剧领域。“我从小就是个作家，”他说，“我喜欢写作。”
Now, he spends only about 10 to 15 hours per week working. When he feels like he’s reached a good stopping point, he does “whatever suits my fancy”. When we spoke on a Thursday afternoon, he said: “I’m about to go out to the dog park and play with the dogs, and then I’m going to watch a football game.”
现在，他每周只工作10到15个小时。当他觉得自己工作得差不多了，就会去“随心所欲”地玩个痛快。周四下午，我们在聊天时，他说：“我要去狗狗乐园和狗狗们一起玩，然后去看一场足球赛。”
Maybe we all want the same thing after all.
也许我们追求的东西，说到底都是一样的。