FEBRUARY 23, 2009
Elderly Emerge as a New Class of Workers -- and the Jobless
By CLARE ANSBERRY
WSJ
AKRON, Ohio -- Mary Appleby, 76 years old, lost her job in January as a cashier at a courthouse cafeteria here. She is now looking for minimum-wage work. Mary Bennett, 80, began filling out applications for fast-food restaurants and convenience stores after she was laid off last March as a machinist. Fred Dase, 81, a bartender until last summer, also needs another job. During past recessions, older workers simply would have retired rather than searching want ads and applying for jobs. But these days, with outstanding mortgages, bank loans and high medical bills, many of them can't afford to be out of work. With jobs so scarce, people in their seventh and eighth decades are up against those half their age in a desperate scramble for work.
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Fewer people than in years past are covered by defined-benefit plans, such as company-sponsored pensions that guarantee them specific monthly income for life. Those with retirement investments have seen their values erode with the stock-market tumble. Others worked for smaller companies, or were self-employed, and never had pensions. Many are outliving whatever savings they might have had, especially by the time they reach their mid to late 70s. Mortgages and medical bills push others into the job market because Social Security and Medicare, though helpful and critical, aren't enough.
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Mr. Dase, the unemployed bartender, knows. He spent 40 years working at Pittsburgh taverns and at his own bar, never receiving a pension. Over the years, when the $1,625 Social Security check he and his wife receive each month didn't cover prescriptions or other medical costs such as supplemental Medicare insurance, they used their charge cards. Last year, when their credit-card debt reached $29,000, they took out a $26,000 home-equity loan to pay off most of it. He still owes $5,000 on one credit card, and needs to come up with $363 a month for eight years to pay off the home-equity loan. Mr. Dase had been working at a local Veterans of Foreign Wars club as a bartender. But he had to leave in August because it required too much standing. He looked for other jobs, applying at Big Lot stores, but he never heard back. "Who is going to hire an 81-year-old man?" he asks.
Three weeks ago, he entered a jobs-training program called the Senior Community Service Employment Program. The program pays him $7.15 an hour to stuff envelopes and greet visitors at the human-services center in Turtle Creek, Pa. "It helps quite a bit," he says. "Towards the end of the month, we start to run out of food. But luckily my daughter comes and helps us out." At the moment, the Senior Community Service program, which currently has $433 million in funding, is the lone federal jobs initiative that targets unemployed older workers. Workers must be at least 55 and not have incomes more than 25% over the poverty level -- $13,000 a year for individuals. The program matches older adults with community nonprofit or public organizations. They receive on-the-job training, and are paid minimum wage, by the federal government, for up to 20 hours a week. Although it handles about 92,000 workers a year, the program is currently funded to serve less than 1% of the workers who would qualify, according to the Sloan Center, citing a General Accountability Office report. The goal is to help both unemployed older adults and community organizations, which often are short on staff. But it isn't meant to provide permanent employment. The paid training is supposed to last for no more than 24 to 36 months. Increasingly, those limits are being exceeded because there are fewer paying jobs available, especially in smaller towns and rural areas.
Lois Humphrey, 80, has trouble climbing stairs and suffers severe hearing loss, so she needs an amplifier on her phone. She had to leave her department-store job because it was too hard on her feet. But she must keep working to pay for rent and prescriptions. She started at Experience Works in 2000. She has moved from one community organization to another in her Mechanicsburg, Pa., community, receiving different training along the way. She is now back with Experience Works, the nonprofit training and placement organization, which thus far has been unable to find her a private-sector job. "I've been stuck in here," she says, but gladly so. "I still need to work because of medications," says Ms. Humphrey, who has cancer, diabetes and arthritis.
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Getting hired isn't impossible. Dorothy Adams, 90, who raised six sons, had been a waitress. She quit at age 85 because of the physical demands. She couldn't make it on $8,000 a year in Social Security and $1,140 in food stamps, so she enrolled in an Experience Works training program in central Pennsylvania. She got a job last year at a home-health-care agency. She drives to the homes of elderly adults who are sick and homebound. She reads them their mail, takes them to appointments, helps them dress and prepares light meals. She gets paid $7.50 an hour, plus mileage reimbursement.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123535088586444925.html (subscription)
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A1
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