Out of Retirement and Into Uncertainty
- From: Jim Higgins <gordian238@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 14:13:18 -0400
Out of Retirement and Into Uncertainty
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/business/yourmoney/27mgmt.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
THINK of retirement and a picture emerges of a grand send-off at the
office, followed by travel, hobbies, grandchildren, and a pension and a
Social Security check to pay for it all. But after awhile, the
retirement fund may start to feel a little skimpy, or the golf course a
little dull — or both — and the concept of returning to work becomes,
well, more than a concept.
But there’s a catch. When older workers look for jobs, they may get as
much respect as Rodney Dangerfield.
It often takes many weeks, or even months, for older workers to find
jobs, distinctly longer than their younger counterparts. In 2006, for
instance, workers age 55 or older spent an average of 22 weeks looking
for work. That was down from 24 in 2005, but still far longer than the
16-week job hunts of workers under 55, according to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics.
In the same vein, a study by the Center for Retirement Research at
Boston College, sampling employers in Massachusetts and Florida, found
that younger workers were about 40 percent more likely to be called in
for job interviews than were candidates 50 or older.
Difficulties persist for older job seekers, even as a growing number of
companies encourage their employees to stay on by offering phased-in
retirement and part-time work. The tightening labor market has not
helped. Nor have warnings by some experts of a potential shortage of new
workers. And the problem is likely to become more apparent as more baby
boomers reach retirement age.
“If you want to work in retirement, don’t retire,” said Sara Rix, a
strategic policy adviser at AARP who has analyzed the labor market. In
other words, it may be a good time to be an older worker, but it is
still hard to become one.
Gary Phelan, a partner at Outten & Golden, a firm specializing in
employment law, says he hears periodically from older job seekers who
believe they have lost out on jobs because of their age. Discrimination
in hiring is hard to prove, he said, because the hiring process itself
inevitably involves some discretion. But he says that he sees claims of
age discrimination increasing in the workplace, and that he believes
older workers’ job-hunting difficulties are not abating. “Every day I
hear when I represent someone in an age case, ‘Well, I’m 58 and I have
30 years of experience and no one’s going to want to hire me,’ ” he
said. “And I have to acknowledge that yes, it’s going to be harder.”
Even when older workers are hired, he said, they sometimes wind up in
jobs that pay less than their old ones or that require less expertise.
“When most employers talk about diversity, they are rarely talking about
age,” he said.
It’s unfortunate that many employers cannot see the advantage of more
openness toward hiring older workers. There will be plenty of them in
coming years: the number of workers 55 or older is expected to increase
by 11 million from 2004 to 2014, accounting for most of the 17 million
increase in overall employment, according to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics. And most workers say they plan to work in their retirement
years, according to surveys by AARP and others.
Certainly, older workers may not be as physically nimble, and they may
need some tutorials on technology. It is also true that older workers
may want salaries that reflect their years of experience and that they
are more likely to make use of health care coverage and, eventually,
retirement benefits. But these workers also offer experience and
perspective. They tend to be committed to their jobs, and are often
willing to share their knowledge, perhaps by mentoring.
A study by Towers Perrin, and sponsored by AARP, on the business case
for older workers analyzed a situation in which a hypothetical company
actively recruited older workers so that the group represented 40
percent of new hires, compared with a more typical 20 percent. The
average compensation costs for the new employees were no more than 1
percent higher than they would have been with a more typical mix of
older and younger hires, the study found.
In the study, the high salaries that older workers sometimes command
were related to experience, so younger workers with equally relevant and
deep experience would have been paid the same. As for health care, the
older job seekers tended to be relatively healthy and to have fewer
dependents in need of insurance than the young workers did.
Some managers are becoming more open to older job seekers. They may
offer incentives for their own retirees to return, like the chance to
pick up their benefits where they left off. Or they may work with a
community group that gives older workers training in order to groom
potential new hires.
Perhaps the most organized outreach to older job seekers is in the
health care industry, where labor shortages are significant. Yale-New
Haven Hospital, for example, is “definitely, absolutely” facing a labor
shortage, according to Nancy Collins, the director of human resources.
So it has stepped up its presence at job fairs, increased online
advertising and recruited more aggressively at nursing schools.
To reach older job seekers, the hospital runs a refresher program for
nurses who have not worked in years, but who have kept up their
licenses, and then gives them incentives to work at Yale-New Haven.
“What we gain from employing an older worker is, first of all,
maturity,” Ms. Collins said. “Also judgment from having been
workplace-hardened, and the body of knowledge they have. When we take a
new graduate out of school, our rule of thumb is it will be two years
until we call them an experienced nurse. When we get an older worker,
they bring all that value to us, and sometimes the work ethic is better.
“Are older workers more likely to fall victim to diseases and so on? I’m
sure that’s true. But there are certain other risks associated with the
younger generation. I see a level playing field.”
.
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