Zanesville Times-Recorder

July 6, 2005

 

Retirees back at work, with flexibility

By Mindy Fetterman

USA TODAY

re-tire v.: 1. to go away, retreat, or withdraw ...

That might be Webster's definition, but as the first of America's 79 million baby boomers reach age 62 in 2008, they are going to change the meaning of the word.

Boomers are likely to continue working, either part time or full time, as consultants or by setting up their own companies, surveys show. They want a "flexible" workplace that lets them take extended sabbaticals, then work intensely for shorter periods of time. They want to "phase-in" retirement by working fewer hours as they near 65, or after. They might change careers, go back to school, volunteer. They're not quite sure yet.

They do know they don't want to keep working like dogs, as they've been doing. Yet, they don't want to hit the golf course full time, either.

"I work very hard, and would I like a few years off? Yes," says Ken Dychtwald, 55, a psychologist and gerontologist. "But would I love to never work again? No, that's not my dream. And it's not the dream of our generation."

In a 2001 survey of boomers, 80 percent said they were planning to work past 65, at least part time, according to AARP.

Many will do it because they have to; they need the money, AARP says. This generation has every expectation that they will live longer than the previous one. Yet, few have saved enough money for 30 years of full retirement.

But there's a second reason they have for wanting to keep working, according to the survey: "Desire to stay mentally active."

"Boomers are going to redefine what we think of as aging. We'll reject the term 'aging' or 'elderly,' " says Deborah Russell, AARP director of economic security. "Many boomers want less responsibility; they've done the management thing. They're looking for more meaningful work, to hone their skills, to still contribute -- but to have flexible work options."

Going, then coming back

Doreen Bellino of Woburn, Mass., retired from Mitre, a government contractor, in 2001 when she was 58 years old.

But, "I'm not really retired-retired," she says. She's kind of retired.

When she left after 25 years in the human resources department, her bosses asked her to come back as a consultant. The company was starting a new database, and "since I had been in benefits so long, they needed someone with the memory of how things were done."

She came back for three days a week. Now, it's about one day. "Oh, it's fantastic," she says. "I'm a jewelry beader, it's a hobby. And I play a lot of golf."

Joyce Montgomery of Detroit retired from her job as a counselor at a children's home a couple of years ago when her husband, Johnny, retired.

"We traveled a little bit, but I got tired of sitting around," she says. "I wanted to come into the workplace to be around people."

She applied at CVS Pharmacy for part-time work. She was thinking 10, maybe 15 hours a week. Now, she works full time.

"They look at seniors like it's not a person who needs to work, so you can really depend on them" because they like their work more, Montgomery, 58, says of her new employer.

And she agrees. "It's not like my (old) job, where it was a bill-paying job. You had to go every day to keep the house together and raise your kids. That was a must. This is not."

Ronald Thompson of Palos Verdes Estates, Calif., spent nearly 40 years working for The Aerospace Corp., a nonprofit company that supports the Defense Department's space program. He retired in July 2002. One month later, he was back.

He's part of a "casual retiree" program at the company and now works about 1,000 hours or half a year. "I thought I'd have been playing golf or fishing or doing some hiking now," he laughs.

But the firm's Milstar satellite communications program was near completion. He had been principal director when he retired. He wanted to see the project through.

Bellino, Montgomery and Thompson aren't boomers; they're a bit older.

But they're part of what Dychtwald, author of "Age Power: How the 21st Century will be Ruled by the New Old," calls the "guinea pig generation." They're testing out phased-in retirement and phased-back-in working lives in advance of the big wave behind them.

"It's like in exploration; the scouts see it first. They may fall off the cliffs, but we're getting to see them experiment with retirement," he says. "We boomers have an advantage."

It wasn't until the 1960s that the American vision of retirement came to be the "golden years" of playing golf and sitting beachside, he says. The combination of a booming middle class after World War II, union-backed pensions and the growth of entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare led to a generation of financially sound seniors.

Before that, you essentially worked until you died.

"It's a relatively fascinating notion of the second half of the 20th century that retirement is a wonderful thing and that you are entitled to be happy, no matter how long you live," Dychtwald says.

Numbers worry employers

American business is facing a massive retirement of workers over coming decades without the padding of a big generation to fill their shoes. The number of workers ages 45 to 64 is going to jump 52 percent by 2010. But the number of workers ages 35 to 44 -- those in prime position to replace the boomers -- will drop 10 percent, according the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Demand is expected to far exceed the U.S. labor force as the mega-generation retires, according to the Employment Policy Foundation in Washington, D.C. "We've got a looming labor shortage, and I don't think we can get enough labor overseas," says Janemarie Mulvey, EPF chief economist.