After her husband’s death, Doris Pease needed time to grieve and piece together her life as a widow.
She sold her house in Nevada, paid off her husband’s medical bills and bought a mobile home in Pocatello, Idaho, to be closer to her brother. Pease, now 68, dug into her hobbies – reading, gardening and embroidering – but after about six years the funds from the home sale, and her peace of mind, began to run out.
“I was getting so depressed sitting around the house that I needed to get back to work,” she said.
For many older Americans, retirement is not a viable option; many are postponing retirement, while others are going back into the workforce, driven by personal or financial reasons.
The trend is evident in the number of older workers – those 55 and older in the work force rose to 22.7 million in May, up from 22 million in 2003 and 20.7 million the year before that, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The increase in older workers coincides with a shift in employers’ attitudes. While there has long been an aversion in corporate America to hiring seniors, who were deemed expensive or difficult to train, that view is changing at a time when the government is forecasting a significant labor shortage by the end of the decade.
The need to work can be explained in part by money problems. AARP estimates that one in 10 Americans 65 and older lives below the poverty level, explaining at least part of the phenomenon. Though most seniors aren’t technically poor, many nonetheless struggle to make ends meet because of limited savings, expensive medications to buy or the loss of a spouse.
Others find employment critical to their mental well-being – contrary to how they expected to feel in their golden years.
“The money helps, don’t get me wrong, but that wasn’t the ultimate goal,” said Ray Clark, 68, of Springfield, Mass., who took a part-time job at the Basketball Hall of Fame because he found retirement boring.
Clark, who spent much of his life as a machine operator for a company that makes corrugated boxes, said he would stick with his current gig – a minimum-wage job – “until I can no longer do it.”
While older workers are well-known for such commitment, there is also the perception among would-be employers that they require considerable training, particularly in the area of technology, according to labor experts.
That’s why organizations that advocate for the elderly sponsor job training and placement services through a federally funded program called Senior Community Service Employment.
It was through this program, authorized by the Older Americans Act of 1965 and funded by the Labor Department, that Pease landed a job at Idaho’s Department of Health and Welfare, gaining experience in health care and general computing skills.
Today she is employed by the American Red Cross, where she works scheduling blood donations and organizing events in the field.
“Basically, I think they wanted somebody reliable that they could depend on,” Pease said.
That, it turns out, is what many U.S. employers are looking for these days and, to help find it, they’re turning more frequently to the growing pool of older workers, according to human resources executives and job-training specialists.
Home Depot Inc., CVS Corp., Anheuser-Busch Cos. and dozens of other major corporations have partnered with or contacted AARP, which recently started a program to identify job-seeking seniors and match them up with the right employers.
This effort came about because executives identified a dearth of younger workers, particularly in the areas of retail, health care and transportation, according to Jim Seith, national director of the AARP Foundation, a sponsor of the Senior Community Service Employment program.
Moreover, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates there could be a 3 million person shortfall in the labor force by 2010, when the oldest boomers are due to begin retiring.
At Toys “R” Us Inc., executives are eager to bring in more older workers for two key reasons, according to Jim Gorenc, director of staffing for the company in the United States.
The first is the aging of the U.S. population. Having older workers “opens up a channel for customers to be serviced by someone like them,” said Gorenc, noting that 10 percent of Toys “R” Us employees are 50 or older.
The other factor, Gorenc said, is that “there is a work ethic from a mature worker that is very strong,” and not as easy to find among younger generations.
Charlotte Lee, the director of Senior AIDES in Springfield, Mass., a municipal job placement program for older workers, said such private sector interest in the senior labor force couldn’t have come at a better time.
She said those seniors who most need to work face stiffer competition than ever before as retirees – stung by recent stock market losses – return to the work force and many baby boomers make plans to work well into their 60s and 70s.
Billy Joe Brady, 60, of Norton, Va., never intended to leave the labor force. But he lost his job in 1998 when the local coal company moved out of town. The thought of hunting for a job for the first time in 25 years frightened him.
Instead, Brady collected $1,300-a-month disability checks for a couple of years, while his wife, Linda, went to work for a nearby Holiday Inn. “We were doing pretty good,” he said, referring to their financial needs.
But gradually Brady’s self-esteem began to deteriorate. “I kind of felt like I was sliding into nothingness, and that didn’t sit well with me,” he said. Brady now works at a nonprofit organization that assists people with disabilities to live independently.
“It feels good to get up every morning to say, ‘Well, I have to go to work,’” Brady said. “I have a purpose every day. Not every day when I get up do I feel the best in the world, but I feel that if I get up and get started, that kind of goes away.”
Associated Press
Billy Joe Brady sorts through telephones and attachments for the hearing impaired at the Junction Center for Independent Living Inc. in Norton, Va.
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