Past 65, and still working !!!!!!

[Daanyeer]

Source: The Enquirer
September 16, 2007 Author: JOHN ECKBERG


Wilma Johnson, 65, of Springfield Township is an eight-time grandmother who drives a truck across four states.

Robert Jacobs, 76, of Latonia traded his flower business for a florist job at Remke Markets.

Pauline Dunn, 73, of Monfort Heights is happy she's working as a sales associate at a Maytag store.

"I don't know how I would manage if I did not work," Dunn says.

As America ages, the nation's oldest citizens are staying on the job longer, reshaping the workplace.

New findings from the U.S. Census Bureau show an increase in the number of people still working long past the traditional retirement age of 65. In 2000, one in five people age 65 or older were employed in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. By 2006, nearly one in four older people were still on the job - an estimated 29,000 workers.

The trend has implications for companies, individuals, families, younger workers and society. For older workers, a steady job compensates for rising energy and health-care costs. Some want to maintain lifestyles that would be difficult without the incomes. Others are healthy and love the mental stimulation of the workplace and the joy of being productive.

But experts say the trend also suggests that America's safety net for its oldest citizens may be in trouble.

Many elderly people are working not because they want to but because they have no choice. Houses aren't paid off, medical bills are mounting, savings are dwindling, and they feel trapped.

Older workers started returning to the job after retirement or simply staying at work longer in the mid-1980s, says Bill Ciferri, associate director of the Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University.

He says the trend is generally a good thing, except when older Americans are forced for economic reasons to return to work.

"I am still paying for a small house," says Dunn, who works at a Maytag store in Deerfield Township. She needed the job after she and her husband divorced after 42 years of marriage.

"The $700-a-month Social Security would in no way cover utilities, insurances, food, gas and auto maintenance and day-to-day expenses," she says.

FEWER YOUNG WORKERS

Older workers are filling jobs that might go empty because there are not enough younger workers, says Joyce Gioia-Herman, president and chief executive of the Herman Group, a Greensboro, N.C. consulting firm that focuses on work force and workplace trends.

Many companies are clamoring for senior citizen workers because of that shortage. And the situation is going to get worse in the years to come, Gioia-Herman contends.

"We are at this point feeling the significant pinch from 15.1 percent fewer people in Generation X," Gioia-Herman says. "That means we have fewer people to take care of the jobs - and what's more, most baby boomers haven't retired yet."

The vast majority of hires at the Procter & Gamble Co. come right out of college and create lifelong careers at the consumer products giant. Most retire in their mid-50s, and the company promotes from within, says Terry Loftus, a P&G spokesman.

"We have a pipeline of people to fill jobs," he says.

While many factors are driving older Americans to work longer, Gioia-Herman puts one issue above all others: "The strongest reason is that many older Americans were conditioned by their parents not to be parasites on society." She says many of that generation work to avoid the isolation of retirement.

Jacobs has been in the flower business for 50 years and went to work for Remke Markets in April because he was tired of sitting around the house.