Changing course
In the years to come, baby boomers are likely to buck the convention of retiring at age 65. Thousands in the generation ahead of them already have.
By ROBERT N. JENKINS
Published August 29, 2006
More and more Americans are challenging the traditional idea of retirement, staying on the job or finding a different employer after the usual send-off party. This social phenomenon is growing even as statisticians predict the nation may experience record shortages of personnel within a quarter-century due to changing population patterns.
As with other recent demographic forecasts, this one is dominated by the baby boomers, who began turning 60 this year.
For the rest of this decade, history professor W. Andrew Achenbaum notes, about 400,000 Americans a year will turn 65. Beginning in the next decade, that number will soar to 1.4-million a year, Achenbaum wrote in the spring issue of the Wilson Quarterly, a magazine connected to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
This is because the boomers number an estimated 78-million. And withdrawing that vast number of workers, even over 20 years, poses a problem:
Census estimates are that each of the two generations that come after the boomers has 15 percent fewer people. Consequently, despite those buzzwords of 21st century economics - "downsizing" and "outsourcing" - there are expected to be millions of more jobs than workers by 2031, when the youngest boomers would reach their 65th birthdays.
But these worst-case scenarios presume that the traditional pattern of working at least until Social Security eligibility holds true. In fact, uncounted numbers of boomers, as well as the generation preceding them - people already in their mid 60s and older - are staying on the job.
The reasons for continuing to work are varied. Some people need the income, as private pension funds are reduced or eliminated, health care costs soar, concerns grow over the future of Social Security funding, and we continue to live longer.
Among those employees not motivated by their financial picture, some crave the camaraderie they get in the workplace or the validation they feel from being productive. Yet other seniors just want to stay busy.
"There has long been a desire by people over 50 to be 'involved,' " says Tim Driver. "That is increasing - it's a big topic in society."
Driver is betting his own job on it. He is CEO of RetirementJobs.com, an online firm that seeks to match people 50 and older with jobs posted for seniors.
His company, Driver said, was created by "a group of human resource management and online recruiting experts who spent more than six months researching whether there really was a need for workers over 50.
"That tipping point has arrived."
Founded in September 2005, his company has "about 75,000 job postings. And we have certified that about 15,000 are with 'age-friendly' companies," Driver said from his Wellesley, Mass., office.
That term means potential employers - and RetirementJobs.com currently includes listings from Borders, Home Depot, Bank of America and the Red Cross - have been checked on 12 criteria. These include the type of training given to workers, the "culture of management, and whether these workers are treated as a valuable asset," Driver said.
Increasingly, larger companies are recognizing the hazard of losing too many workers - especially those with years of efficient performance and institutional knowledge of their employer. Managers say such staffers know "how to work," or that they embody the work ethic. The translation is that these employees both believe they should earn their wages and should be loyal.
Additionally, companies are aware that turnover costs them in productivity. To counter that loss of bodies and efficiency, increasing numbers of firms are offering workers at the edge of retirement inducements to remain. These include flexible hours, extended health care, working from home via computer, job sharing and part-time assignments that keep their skills on the job site while letting the workers ease into retirement.
Jocelyn Lincoln, a national director for recruiting and retention for Kelly Services, confirms that seniors are in demand: "The need for intellectual capital knowledge of how to best do a job does not go away" merely because employees retire, she says.
Consequently, her agency placed about 70,000 temporary workers over 50 in 2005, the majority in engineering, science and IT jobs. In Florida, however, a significant number of the estimated 9,000 workers in that over-50 group that Kelly placed last year were substitute teachers.
Such senior job seekers, Lincoln added, "are very engaged in wanting to stay active."
And many workers who spent decades with one employer or one type of job figure it is time for a change of workplace. Traditional retirement may even be the impetus to follow a dream.
Said RetirementJobs.com's Driver: "We hear more often than not that people are looking to switch gears - get into something consistent with their passion."
Robert N. Jenkins can be reached at (727) 893-8496 or jenkins@sptimes.com.