SAN FRANCISCO — AARP is adding three federal government agencies and six private companies to its list of employers looking to hire people 50 and older for a variety of full-time, part-time and seasonal jobs, the group announced Thursday.
The Internal Revenue Service, the Peace Corps and the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Disaster Relief are the newest members and the first federal employers on AARP’s National Employer Team, bringing the total number of employers in the three-year-old partnership to 38, said Deborah Russell, director of work force issues for AARP in Washington.
A number of private health-care and home-care companies also are joining the roster, including Scripps Health, Bright Horizons Family Solutions, Home Instead Senior Care, Synergy HomeCare, AnswerNet and Vedior North America.
Older Americans can view job opportunities and apply online free through the AARP Web site regardless of whether they’re one of the group’s 40 million members.
More employers are catching on to the benefits of hiring older workers, Russell said. “They recognize the fact that mature workers bring good experience and skills to the workplace.”
“Many see lower turnover rates (among) mature workers,” she said. “More importantly, some recognize this is a labor pool they will have to pull from because they don’t have the ability to attract younger workers to these kinds of jobs.”
Some baby-boomer workers who tap the AARP employer network want more flexibility in their work lives but don’t see themselves retiring to pursue leisure activities for what could be another 20 or more years, Russell said.
“The vast majority are people who are looking to transition into new job opportunities who are still working,” she said. “You have people who may even be retirement-eligible but are looking to transition into new job opportunities doing something different than what they’ve been doing for many years.”
Others find they can’t retire even if they want to stop working and need to develop new career strategies.
About 69 percent of boomers plan to work past the traditional retirement age of 65, and most cite the high cost of health care and insufficient savings as reasons, Russell said. “People have come to the realization that ‘Yeah, I have to work longer because I simply won’t have enough money to retire.’”
AARP doesn’t track job placement rates, but it monitors members’ complaints about their experiences with the National Employer Team, she said. “I’m happy to say there have been very few.”
The Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit group encouraging civil service, announced two new partnerships as well, including private-sector partner IBM, which is helping its 350,000 current and retired workers learn about and potentially be hired into government jobs.
The U.S. Treasury Department is the first government agency to sign on as a partner, and it needs to fill nearly 14,000 high-priority jobs in the next two years, said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service in Washington.
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