A new AARP study, ‘‘Blueprint for the Future,” reports that more and more older people are working each year and postponing retirement past age 65, although not necessarily postponing receipt of benefits.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that if the economy continues to grow at its current rate, there may be a shortage of 10 million workers to fill available jobs by 2010, said bureau analyst Mitra Toossi. Workers between 25 and 54 are expected to drop to 66 percent of the workforce from 71 percent in 2000.
About 41 percent of members of the Society for Human Resource Management in Alexandria, Va., who responded to a recent survey said that their organizations ‘‘are bringing back retirees to work in some capacity,” said Jennifer Schramm, the nonprofit association’s manager of workplace trends and forecasting.
In another society survey in 2003, 31 percent of respondents said their organizations offer various employee options to either attract or retain older workers.
Family-friendly benefits — elder-care centers, flextime, leave to care for relatives and formal phased retirement — for workers 55 to 64 years old was a top inducement, according to the survey. Educational services organizations were the leading sector in offering such benefits, with 22 percent offering them, Schramm said. Next was government at 15 percent; durable goods manufacturing, 13 percent; non-durable goods manufacturing, 11 percent; nonprofits, 12 percent; for-profit services and health, 11 percent; and high-technology business, 8 percent.
But despite trends of more older workers both nationally and in Maryland, many companies, especially many large ones, are still not enthused about hiring older workers, says David Gamse, executive director of the Jewish Council for the Aging in Rockville.
Many employers in recent studies, he said, still say older workers have antiquated skills, resist change, expect higher salaries and cost employers more in medical insurance and other benefits.
NASD, though, is ‘‘ahead of the curve” for companies that make older workers a priority, according to AARP. The group named NASD Maryland’s 2005 Best Employer for workers over 50.
‘‘Employers looking to recruit and retain a skilled and experienced workforce could learn much from companies who are ahead of the curve in providing exemplary policies and practices for a mature workforce,” said Kelley Coates-Carter, spokeswoman for AARP-Maryland.
To encourage retired company employees to stay on, NASD allows them to keep their benefits intact while returning to work on a consulting or contractual basis.
One active mature worker is Mary Ann Evan, 65, who lives just over the Montgomery County line in Washington, D.C. Evan is a retired information technology professional who is still at Pepco, the Washington utility that provides electricity for much of suburban Maryland. Working part-time, Evan kept her Pepco retirement benefits intact because she is paid, not by Pepco, but by a contractor, Taleo Corp. of San Francisco.
Taleo pays the returning retirees, which Pepco call ‘‘payrollees,” through several different staffing companies, said Earnest Jenkins, Pepco’s vice president of people strategy and human resources.
‘‘There is an aging-workforce issue we’re facing right now because a large part of our workforce is reaching retirement age,” Jenkins said. Pepco, with more than 5,000 employees in five states, tries to keep the mature worker engaged with the company, he said.
‘‘They have institutional knowledge that is valuable to us ... rather than having this gap,” he said. Pepco has about 4,000 retirees, with a small percentage choosing to return as payrollees, he added.
Pepco brought Evan back to utilize both her IT experience and her longtime hobby, writing. She writes technical documentation to keep Pepco’s information systems safe from hackers.
‘‘If I don’t feel like coming in, I set my own schedule. And the work, I love. I have been very fortunate,” said Evan who now also has time to write fiction and a history of her Polish-American family.
‘‘Yes, you always have to get back on the horse,” is the standard advice from Rafael Arellano to older workers, drawing from his favorite 15th-century Spanish ballad poem, ‘‘El Cid.” The retired professor of Hispanic culture now places seniors and other workers with companies in his second full-time stint as a core service worker at Montgomery Works’ workforce center at Westfield Shoppingtown in Wheaton.
Then, Arellano received training in office and computer skills at the Senior Aides program at the Jewish Council for the Aging and at Montgomery Works. ‘‘I thought that I would try to work with people who need hope because hope is what the Spanish ballads are all about,” he said.
He soon started his own placement business, Raphael Arellano Recruiting Workers. Gamse, with the Jewish seniors group, said many older workers like to go into their own businesses. Arellano has since abandoned his placement business — his driving to meet clients in northern Virginia and Baltimore and rising gasoline costs became cost-prohibitive, he said — and returned to Montgomery Works.
Many older workers also are hired back into the workforce by smaller companies. Last week, Sy Kasambira — a native of Zimbabwe with a doctorate in business management who is following in Arellano’s footsteps at the Jewish council’s Senior Aides program in Bethesda — placed 60-year-old Joyce Weaver of Silver Spring as the new receptionist at Jobin Real Estate office at Montgomery Mall.
‘‘I could not find a job at all for quite a while and I don’t know how much my age had to do with it,” Weaver said. The Senior Aides program provided Weaver with better opportunities for interviews, she said, and refresher courses in computer skills.
‘‘It is our privilege to hire an ‘older worker,’” Michelle Simon, Jobin’s manager at the mall office, wrote in an e-mail.
‘‘Age is not an issue. Fulfilling the job position is what our goal is. We were lucky to learn of this program through a friend who works at the agency,” she said of the Senior Aides. Jobin owner Joseph Yost said Simon has often suggested hiring older workers.
‘‘Smaller employers tend to value older employees more because of their reliability,” Gamse said. ‘‘If you need your store opened on time, and you need someone to be there so that the door is shut and locked at 9 in the evening, an older worker typically can be depended upon.
For Lockheed Martin Corp. in Bethesda, retaining very specialized knowledge in older employers is a concern, said spokesman Thomas Greer. The median age of its employees — including 60,000 highly trained scientists and engineers nationwide — is above 40, he said.
Consequently, Lockheed maintains the best ‘‘quality of life and competitive” employment package as possible to keep its talent, Greer said.
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