Retirement? More seniors say: ‘No, it’s off to work I go’

Sep 12th, 2007 | By Bill | Category: Employment News



Retirement? More seniors say: ‘No, it’s off to work I go’

Virginia Milton, 81, likes her work in the office at St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Sacramento. When her savings from pensions started to dry up she went back to work six hours a day, five days a week. Her paycheck provides two tickets to every Oakland Raiders home game. Sacramento Bee/Anne Chadwick Williams

Work mornings are tough for 81-year-old Virginia Milton.

“I have a lot of energy, but every day when the alarm goes off at 5 a.m. I just think, ‘I can’t go to work today,’ ” Milton said Tuesday. ” ‘I’m too stiff. I’m too sore.’ But then, I tell myself, ‘Of course, you can.’ ”

A rising number of local seniors are waking up to the reality of another day on the job, according to a Bee analysis of U.S. census figures released today.

Whether they approach workdays with dread or gusto, out of need or desire, more than one of every five Sacramento area residents ages 65 to 74 were still in the labor force in 2006.

That’s up nearly 50 percent since 1990, when just one of every seven people in the same age range still worked.

The reasons are many. Pensions are fading, supplanted by 401(k)s and other employee savings programs that don’t provide as well for older people. The workplace is more welcoming to seniors. And people are living longer, healthier lives, making them more likely to outlive their savings — and perhaps less willing to cut corners.

“The money creates options. Do I want to be able to take off and go to Hawaii for a week when I want to?” said Joe Grant, 69, of Rancho Cordova.

“Yes” was his resounding answer.

Instead of retiring, he switched from financial planning to retirement coaching and cut back his hours. His goal was eliminating the least satisfying parts of his old career. Now he can work partly for the joy of it — and partly for the extras money can buy.

Milton, who in earlier years juggled two jobs while her husband struggled with heart problems, has more modest luxuries in mind — her paycheck provides two tickets to every Oakland Raiders home game.

“I can use the money,” she said of her job as a receptionist at St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Sacramento.

She likes her work, keeping track of an often-hectic church office, dropping off and picking up a conversation while buzzing people into the building and handing notes to co-workers passing by.

But she turned to it after her savings — deducted from her paychecks during years as a school nurse and a hospital nurse — started to dry up. The money went toward her house after she and her husband moved to Sacramento. Today, she works six hours a day, five days a week. Her husband passed away about 18 months ago.

Many seniors who turn to the Area 4 Agency on Aging for help with job placements flat out need the paycheck, said Gloria Parker, who runs the agency’s senior employment program.

While the overall poverty rate for Sacramento has dropped since 2000, it has risen for senior citizens, census figures show.

Parker, who worked with more than 100 senior job-seekers last year, said she can usually help them because some companies prefer older workers.

Employers are much more open to a graying work force than they used to be, said Mike Dourgarian, who has run Manpower of Sacramento for 28 years.

He’s seen a steady aging of the work force, and more options for people who want to stay in the job market.

“We’re facing a shortage of skilled workers, almost any kind of knowledge worker,” he said, “particularly math and science careers.”

Baby boomers, while not yet old enough to fall into the 65-74 age range, are anticipating they’ll have to keep on earning, too, said Mark Beach, a spokesman for AARP.

In surveys done for the association in 1998 and 2003, 80 percent of boomers said they expected to work for pay in their retirement years.

Tellingly, in the five years between the two studies, the number of boomers who expected to have enough money in retirement fell from 41 percent to 31 percent. And the number who anticipated working for the fun of it also declined.

Anxiety reflected in those numbers seems well founded, said Ken Jacobs, chair of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.

“We’ll have more and more people reaching retirement age with less there in terms of a pension and less savings,” Jacobs said, because 401(k) plans simply can’t provide for people the way pensions once did.

“I think we can expect this trend to continue.”

Beach, of AARP, isn’t sure whether the changing outlook is good or bad for society.

“It’s a reality,” he said. “Pensions haven’t turned out the way people thought they would. The money they thought they would have for retirement, they don’t have.”

Beach predicts aging baby boomers will be critical to the work force, giving older people leverage to push for fewer hours and more flexible schedules.

“The baby boom generation is huge. Companies and employers are starting to figure this out,” Beach said. “The boomers aren’t going to be able to retire. … The economy needs the boomers.”

According to the 2006 census figures, local men are more likely than women to work past 65. About 27 percent of Sacramento area men between ages 65 and 74 are in the labor force, up from 23 percent in 2000. About 18 percent of women that age are in the work force, up from 14 percent in 2000.

At even older ages, about 5 percent — roughly one of every 20 — local residents 75 and older were working in 2006.

Ernesto Mariano, a 73-year-old accountant, expects to be one of those workers, not out of necessity but out of preference.

If he retired, Mariano said, “I wouldn’t know what to do, actually. I don’t golf. I just watch TV and sports.”

Eventually, the time will come for almost everyone to slow down.

Milton, the church receptionist, is thinking hard about retiring again when she’s 83 — assuming she can afford it.

“My driver’s license runs out in May 2009,” she said. “I’m not sure I want to renew.”

Similar Posts:

Tags:

Leave a Comment