A survey in thirty organizations known to be retraining workers over 35 years of age as well as young workers for operations which required a training period of at least two weeks, aimed at determining how the proportion of older men and women who successfully completed training compared with that of the young, and how long they remained in the job for which they had been retrained compared with their younger colleagues. The data suggest that a higher proportion of older men than young tend to leave during the training period and soon afterwards. Older men tend to succeed best in those jobs requiring training periods of 10-13 weeks. They tend to survive less well in those requiring longer training periods or very short training periods and least well in those requiring 6-8 weeks. Systematic methods of training, though they may reduce the length of time required to learn a job, tend to relate to a lower long term survival rate for both age groups than does exposure training. The turnover among women trainees followed up was greater than that of the men; however, the survival rate of the older women tended to be higher than that of young women during training and during the transition period from training to production as well as in the long run. (author/nl)