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Boomers! Forget Retirement. Big Business Wants You

Sun Jun 13, 2004 07:06 AM ET

By Ritu Kalra

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Yo! Baby boomers! Thinking about retirement? You may want to shift gears and start thinking about your next career move. U.S. retailers are taking notice of your work ethics and experience, and they want YOU.

The people hammering home your worth are at AARP, the country's largest association for Americans 50 and older.

AARP teamed up with the Home Depot chain in February to recruit older workers. It was the first national hiring partnership that AARP had established with any company.

Now, the 35-million-member organization is joining forces with Toys R Us Inc. and drug store chain CVS Corp. to promote seasoned workers.

"It just became evident that there was real interest from companies that wanted to connect with mature workers," said Emily Allen, AARP's assistant national director of the Senior Community Service Employment Program.

International staffing agency Adecco SA is on the brink of joining the program, and book seller Barnes & Noble Inc. is expected to sign on within a month, she said.

Under the partnership, AARP assesses skills of potential applicants, then refers them to participating companies.

"Managers respect the experience that mature workers bring to the job," Allen said.

That level of experience could soon become a rare commodity: The first of America's 78 million baby boomers -- born between 1946 and 1964 -- reach full retirement age in 2011. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the number of U.S. workers between the ages of 25 and 44 will not increase at a fast enough rate to replace them.

And as boomers become a larger percentage of the work force, recruiting and retaining them will have strategic implications.

"The aging work force is a growing demographic," said Jim Gorenc, U.S. staffing director for Toys R Us. About 10 percent of the toy retailer's 65,000 employees are already over 50. But during the holiday season, when its work force can swell to 125,000 people, the partnership with AARP will help the company recruit more boomers.

"We want to tap into them," said Gorenc. "Their reliability and work ethic are tremendous."

Cindy Milburn, senior director of staffing at Home Depot Inc., agreed. "We have better attendance with older workers," she said, and older workers stay with the company three times longer than their younger co-workers.

Roughly 17 percent of Home Depot's 299,000 worldwide employees are over 50. Milburn said their longer tenures and good attendance help keep turnover low and recruitment costs down.

The thrust by large companies to hire more boomers comes at financial crunch time.

Boston College economist Alicia Munnell has calculated that the typical American household approaching retirement has $50,000 put aside for "the golden years" -- a much smaller nest egg than they had hoped for.

And although longer life spans mean more time to enjoy retirement, shrinking pension accounts demand that many boomers keep working.

The average worker placed in jobs at government agencies by the National Older Worker Career Center, a nonprofit organization based in Arlington, Virginia, is 68.

Most experienced employees, including economists and chemists, who get jobs through that program make a fraction of their market-based salaries. But their $16.87 maximum hourly pay comes with full health benefits, important for those who have retired but are not yet eligible for Medicare, said Joel Reaser, senior vice president of NOWCC.

Joanna Gibson, who taught English to junior high students in Washington for 30 years, applied to the program because her $20,000 annual pension was not enough to support her retirement. The 68-year-old has worked for the EPA's Superfund documents program for 13 years and has no plans to leave.

"I like to be active," she said. "And as long as I have the health, I intend to use my mind."

© Copyright Reuters 2004.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=reutersEdge&storyID=5407349