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Politics

What is 'retirement age'? Definition may change

By STEPHEN NOHLGREN
Published June 8, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Dirk Shadd] Joe Bonanno, 66, who has been working in the electrical department at Home Depot for 16 years, sifts through supplies for a shopper at the 22nd Avenue N. location in St. Petersburg.

WASHINGTON - Joe Bonanno, 66, isn't trying to break new social ground as he serves customers in the electrical aisles of a St. Petersburg Home Depot.

"I can only fish once a week. I can only play golf once a week, " Bonanno said. "Here I can use my brain."

Nevertheless, Bonanno and his company are pathfinders.

America's labor force will soon start shrinking unless business leaders figure out how to keep older people in the work force. Home Depot, for example, offers stock options and health care to part-timers and encourages snowbirds to work summers in Michigan and winters in Florida.

But Home Depot is an exception in American business, Humphrey Taylor, chairman of the Harris Poll, said Thursday.

Though a recent survey of human relations officials indicated that workers over 55 are more reliable, more experienced and have one-third the turnover, keeping them around is a low corporate priority.

The Harris Interactive-Merrill Lynch survey showed that only one company in four is "very concerned" about losing baby boomers, Taylor said, and one-third "said they hadn't even thought about it."

Other speakers at a two-day conference in Washington this week on older workers echoed those sentiments.

One of the themes at the conference - put on by the Center for Productive Longevity - was that businesses, individuals and the country must soon abandon the notion that working life should end at 62 or 65.

"Financial security for baby boomers for the most part is increasingly at risk unless we make structural changes, " said Bradley Belt, former director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.

Couples now reaching 65 years old face a 63 percent chance that one of them will reach 95, according to recent life-expectancy studies.

They will need $200, 000 to cover health care costs not covered by Medicare, and that does not include the extra cost of long-term care.

The median nest egg of boomers nearing retirement? $50, 000.

Meanwhile, Americans have actually spent more than they saved for the last two years, the first time that has occurred since the Great Depression.

By and large, boomers want to work longer in some fashion, Taylor said, whether full-time, part-time or cycling back and forth between work and leisure. Though 62 is still the preferred age for quitting their current job, the median age they expect to stop working altogether is 70.

While money remains important, boomers' main reason for working is to stay physically and mentally active and socially engaged, Taylor said.

That doesn't mean that a job will necessarily be waiting.

Business leaders know that the work force is going to shrink and age, said William Maroni of the Society for Human Resource Management, the national trade association for HR managers. "But there is a fundamental disconnect between understanding that and behavior."

Less than one-third of American businesses have any kind of strategy for retaining older workers, Maroini said, compared with 53 percent in Singapore and 83 percent in Japan.

One reason is health care costs. Most other industrial countries have universal health care, paid by the government. In the United States, businesses bear much of the burden, and an older work force can drive up those costs.

"If we can solve the health care issue, it will radically change the hiring and retention of older workers, " Maroni said.

Home Depot isn't waiting, said Dennis Donovan, former human resources chief. The home repair chain has partnered with AARP to aggressively hire older workers.

"This isn't just warm, fuzzy stuff, " Donovan said. "They are friendly, they know what they are doing and the other good thing is ... they show up for work! What a good thing."

Donovan said older workers are an increasing part of the company's work force, but did not give any specific numbers.

He added that marketing studies show that older customers buy more when they see sales agents closer to their age.

Bonanno ran his own electrical contracting business for 36 years, just like his dad. But after his children grew up and finished college, he chucked the headaches and responsibilities of entrepreneurship 16 years ago and went to work for a regular paycheck.

He opens up the electrical department at 6 a.m. at the Home Depot on 22nd Avenue N and even leads classes for other sales people on how things work, which is one reason the store pays him $19.30 an hour.

His only complaint is the bottom shelf.

"When I get something down there I have to make sure I have something to hang onto, " he said. "Otherwise, I get down on my knees and have to kill myself getting up."

[Last modified June 8, 2007, 01:53:34]