Abstract
Owing to the aging U.S. workforce and the increase in the percentage of shiftworkers in the workforce, an understanding of the effects of shiftwork on older employees is considered important by the U.S. Bureau of Mines. As part of a larger study on shiftwork by the Bureau, survey data were obtained from 295 rotating shiftworkers. The workers were categorized into three age groups with means of 27.4, N = 76; 36.4, N = 177; and 49.3, N = 42. Anova's revealed that older workers reported greater frequency of 6 out of 23 physical symptoms than younger workers. Older workers also reported themselves to be more "morning" types than younger workers, which may help explain some of the age-by-shift differences, manova's were used to determine age-by-shift interactions of sleeping habits, stress, and physical symptoms. Though most of the workers had problems with the night shift, the older workers seemed to have more trouble adjusting to it, and also to the afternoon shift, than the younger workers. For the most part, however, the older workers seemed to adjust to the day shift as well as if not better than the younger workers.
