Older workers say they're not all that stressed due to work, a new study from the University of Michigan suggests.
Researchers examined the different types of stressors affecting 1,544 study participants between the ages of 53 and 85 and their impact on health and well-being.
Only 15 per cent of those surveyed said that their work "often" or "almost" interfered with their personal lives, though 47 per cent did agree that time constraints are stressful.
The findings, released Monday, were presented in San Francisco last week at the annual meeting of the Gerontological Society of America.
The study is based on data collected in 2006 through the University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study, which is conducted by the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research and receives funding from the U.S. National Institute on Aging.
Nineteen per cent of the survey's participants admitted they had poor job security. "Given what we know about the extent of age discrimination at work and the current economic climate regarding unemployment, this is a surprisingly low number," said Gwenith Fisher, a researcher with the Institute for Social Research who participated in the study, in a release.
"In general, older workers did not report high levels of work-related stressors," she said. Fisher speculated that the lower reports of stress among older workers could be due to fewer child-rearing responsibilities, as children might have grown up and moved out, leaving their parents with more personal time.
Still, Fisher pointed out that time pressures are still a problem, given the rash of technological devices that have become entrenched in office culture in recent years.
"Technological advances like Blackberries, along with out-sourcing and down-sizing, have all increased the amount of work and pace at work," Fisher said. "But it's particularly important to look at the effects this pressure may have on older workers, whose health may be more vulnerable than that of younger workers."
The study found that those older workers who had less job stress tended to be more satisfied with their lives and in better health.
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