New ideas for older workers

Posted on 16. Feb, 2006 posted by Bill in Employment News

Year by year, the percentage of “retirement age” workers in the labor force is inching higher.

About one in seven persons over age 65 now is employed full or part time, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

This is at a time when many companies — usually for cost-cutting reasons — are encouraging early retirements.

If you attend job transition support groups or meet with displaced workers at outplacement seminars, you’ll see a lot of over-50 workers.

Many of them want to return to work. They are financially and emotionally unable to accept long-term unemployment.

Yet, even as companies appear to be separating a disproportionate share of older workers from work, the work force participation rate of persons age 55 to 65 — especially women — is growing at a substantially faster rate than growth in the under-55 labor force.

Older workers tell pollsters that they’re working — or looking for work — for two main reasons:

■ They need the money.

■ They like to work and aren’t ready to quit.

In 2008, the oldest members of the big baby boomer generation will turn 62, the earliest eligibility age for Social Security retired-worker benefits.

If those boomers act like recent 62-year-olds, about half will opt to phase out work and begin to collect retired-worker benefits.

But, according to AARP surveys, eight out of 10 boomers now say they expect to continue working past “retirement age.”

Just since 1998, the average expected age of full retirement has risen from 63.9 to 65.5, according to a report by the AARP Public Policy Institute.

Whether members of the baby boomer generation will work that long remains to be seen.

Personal health and finances can easily change retirement expectations as people age. But the trend toward wanting or needing to work longer is likely to stay.

AARP researchers say workers nearing retirement express a preference for continuing to work part time. It’s a self-made safety net in a time of pension and Social Security uncertainty.

And that puts the onus on businesses to come up with more creative ways to keep older workers on the job.

There’s something in that retention effort for companies, too: institutional memory. New blood always is needed, but organizations need been-there, done-that experience, too.

To avoid a brain drain as workers who are financially able to retire choose to do so, older-worker advocates are calling on employers to provide work options.

The solution is to offer older workers a combination of flexible work arrangements and substantial, important work to do.

Suggestions include job-sharing, part-time, months-on/months-off work schedules, and phased retirement plans.

Phased retirement plans would allow a company’s retirement-eligible workers to continue working at, for example, half time for half salary for up to three years while collecting partial pension benefits.

Ideas like these aren’t accommodations for the feeble and infirm. They’re a necessary response to changing demographics and economics.

EmploymentDigest.net

New ideas for older workers

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