The Age of Unreason Charles Handy In his book The Age of Unreason Professor Handy describes the dramatic changes that are taking place in our lives today and warns that we must adapt to these changes if we want to survive in the future. Handy believes that in the future less than 50% of the workforce will be employed full-time by an organization. These full-time employees will be the qualified professionals, technicians, and managers who are essential to an organization. Their working lives will be a lot more demanding than today, but in return they will be well-paid and they will retire earlier. The rest of the workforce will be self-employed or will work part-time, providing organizations with the products and services they require on a contract basis. Handy forecasts a big increase in the number of working mothers in the future and believes there will be a large number of unemployed. Handy gives us plenty of figures to worry about. He estimates that by the year 2040, one person in five will retire, and one in ten will be over seventy-five years old. There will be one retiree to every three people of working age, and even more than that in countries such as Germany and Switzerland, where the proportion will be as much as one to two. Retirees will remain healthy and active for longer than they do today and many will live to be a hundred years old, a fact which leads Handy to suggest that the term retirement will no longer be appropriate. He suggests the third age is a more appropriate description, since it will be as important a part of our lives as the first age of learning and the second age of working are for us today. According to Professor Handy, the future workforce will  _  .
adapt to the changes in retirement easily be mainly self-employed have fewer full-time workers than today work on a contract basis