The 1978 amendments to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) provide older workers with the option of extending their worklives as a means of meeting the financial requirements of their later years. As part of a larger study funded by the Administration on Aging, DHEW, the degree to which inflation and ADEA was expected to impact workers' retirement decisions was analyzed. In a nation-wide sample, over 1600 employers responded to mailed questionnaires and telephone interviews seeking information on how they expected their firms and employees to be affected by ADEA. Data indicated that employers almost universally predicted minimal immediate impacts from the ADEA amendments, including no radical departures from past retirement patterns. The potential impacts of inflation, however, generated very different responses. With continued high inflation, 80% of respondents predicted widespread delayed retirement among workers. Patterns of responses indicated that these expectancies varied by geographic region and industry, suggesting that inflation may well promote structural problems within the economy. Overall, results indicated that the importance of ADEA lies not in the impacts it will directly promote, but rather in the increased latitude available to workers in their adjustments to other phenomena. (Author)