Inglês — L. interpretação de texto - reading comprehension

Companies in the rich world are confronted with a rapidlyageing workforce. Nearly one in three American workerswill be over 50 by 2012, and America is a young countrycompared with Japan and Germany. China is also ageingrapidly, thanks to its one-child policy. This means thatcompanies will have to learn how to manage older workersbetter.Most companies are remarkably ill-prepared. There was afl icker of interest in the problem a few years ago but it wassnuffed out by the recession. The management literatureon older workers is a mere molehill compared with themountain devoted to recruiting and retaining the young.Companies are still stuck with an antiquated model fordealing with ageing, which assumes that people shouldget pay rises and promotions on the basis of age. Theyhave dealt with the burdens of this model by periodicallydownsizing older workers or encouraging them to takeearly retirement. This has created a dual labour marketforolder workers, of cosseted insiders on the one hand andunemployed or retired outsiders on the other.But this model cannot last. The number of young people,particularly those with valuable science and engineeringskills, is shrinking. And governments are raising retirementages and making it more diffi cult for companies to shedolder workers, in a desperate attempt to cope with theirunderfunded pension systems.Feb 4th 2010 | From The Economist print edition [adapted]

According to the text, businesses