Island-Sity

We represent a pretty fair mix of white-collar jobs: an insurance executive, a regional sales manager for an office furniture company, a retail chain executive, a partner in a commercial real estate firm, a home builder, a lawyer, a teacher — and my wife and I, journalists. As we talked, it was clear that while we all felt lucky to still have jobs, there wasn’t one of us whose business hadn’t been seriously wounded by this not-so Great Recession.

And yet, even as business has slowed, we have been speeded up, and the dead giveaway was the growth of laptops in paradise. Five years ago, in Barbados, none of us consulted a computer. Three years ago, in Costa Rica, a few family members walked to an Internet cafe and checked our e-mail one afternoon just for the novelty of being online in a faraway place.

This year I stood in a long line in the lobby of this resort in the Dominican Republic, to wait my turn to sign up for 25 hours of Internet service for $25. Several in the family brought laptops and we checked our work e-mail daily.

It almost seems like a dream from long ago, but I can remember coming back from vacation and sitting at my desk that first day and doing nothing but catching up — on my mail, on the back newspapers, on office politics. Nor did anyone press me. It was understood: I was in a 24-hour vacation decompression zone.

Now, we keep up on vacation, we keep up on weekends (my incoming work e-mail suggests we also keep up past midnight on weekdays). And on Monday morning, we hit the ground running.

These days, rarely do I receive one of those automated e-mail responses saying, “Sorry I’m on vacation, I’ll answer when I return.”

We expect ourselves to be available.

Whether we want to or not, most boomers have had to embrace technology. But the promise, that it’s making our lives easier? A lie. Indeed, I’m convinced the opposite is true, that we’re working harder.

That’s the case in my own reporter’s world. Twenty-five years ago it wasn’t unusual for me to call the research department at the newspaper once a week for help. Now, I may call twice a year. Now, I’m expected to use all the wonderful online research tools at my fingertips.

And yet the core of my job — going out and talking in person to strangers about their stories — has not changed at all, is no easier. I heard the same thing from my brothers-in-law in real estate and office furniture, and from my father-in-law in insurance. They still must travel by car, taxi, subway, plane, and meet the clients to build the bonds that close the sales at the core of their labor. It’s the central lesson George Clooney, the baby boomer, teaches the 20-something Ivy League techno-whiz in the film “Up in the Air” — even if your job is firing people, to do it right (and by the way, contain liability claims) you need to look ‘em in the eye, and Skype won’t do.

On a Friday, we landed back at J.F.K., an airport with a baggage claim system so spectacularly dysfunctional, you’re instantly transported from paradise to the brutalities of daily life.

On Sunday, I drove through a snowstorm to spend an afternoon interviewing a couple for my next column.

I want to be clear: no complaints here. I work in an industry that’s bleeding jobs. In the last year, for my articles, I’ve interviewed hundreds of unemployed boomers face to face. There isn’t a time I don’t think, there but for the grace of God ...

Still, for those of us left standing, the workplace is growing tougher, as I tried to confirm from my e-mail messages and calls to the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the Monday morning after vacation.

In the third quarter of 2009 (the latest data available), at a time when unemployment grew from to 9.8 percent from 9.4, business productivity grew at an annual rate of 8.1 percent, the highest since 2003. We were doing more with less. And while productivity is a broad economic term, and can be influenced by numerous factors including capital investment and the organization of production, one important variable is “effort of the work force,” i.e. — all that laptop tapping we do on vacations, weekends and ‘round midnight.

Even more striking to me is the government’s predictions about what is going to happen to us boomers in the workplace over the next decade as we reach what used to be considered retirement age.

A lot of us will go right on working.

In 1988, when the World War II greatest generation was hitting retirement age, 11.5 percent of people 65 and older were still working. By 2008, 16.8 percent of those 65 and older were working, and by 2018, when those 65 and over will be mostly boomers, 22.4 percent are expected to still be working, according to a new study by Mitra Toossi, an economist with the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

She projects that by 2018, 14 percent of 79-year-olds — 1 in 7 — will still work, versus 6.1 percent in 1988 (1 in 16). “It is an amazing change in a short time,” Ms. Toossi said.

Some of this is good — we’re healthier and want to work longer. Some is social policy — a change is now in progress in the age when people are able to retire with full Social Security benefits, from 65 to 67.

And some is just really bad news. The economic downturn has depleted retirement and savings accounts and that means many will have no choice.

For the time being, lots of us are staying in condition to work until we’re 79 by keeping at it on vacations and weekends.

One of the people whose e-mail messages I answered from paradise was Allan Goldstein, 60, a college professor from Manhattan. He wrote that he had a possible column idea for me. In my e-mail messages back, I didn’t tell him I was in paradise — didn’t want him to think I had better things to do than write him. I didn’t want him to envision this reporter living the fat life in the tropics, while he was freezing in New York City.

On a Wednesday at 5:17 p.m. I e-mailed him, suggesting we speak by phone on Friday (when I’d be home). “Hi Mike,” he e-mailed back 16 minutes later. “I return from St. Croix on Friday evening. O.K. if we talk over the weekend?”