JoAnn Follis, age 63, a keyboard operator for the Tennessee Valley Authority, took early retirement in 1991. A resident of Hixson, Texas, Follis had worked since she was 18, and says she only took “time off to have two children.”
But two years later, Follis made an important self-discovery: “Retirement,” she said, “is for the birds.”
That’s when she decided to go back to work and signed up with a temporary agency. Today, Follis is employed by Olsten Staffing Services and works two days a week doing office work. Her pay averages $8 an hour.
“Working for Olsten gives me independence and some spending money,”said Follis, whose husband, Alvin, also is semi-retired. “Temp work allows me to be in the business world and also to garden, do arts and crafts and spend time helping organize a senior community center,” Follis said. “It keeps me going.”
Many older workers feel the same way. Seniors (workers 55 to 64 years old) are entering the labor force at double the national average. In 1996, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, workers 16 and over entered the labor market at a rate of .3 percent; seniors entered at a rate of .7 percent.
Temporary work is attracting retirees nationwide, according to Bruce Steinberg, director of research at the National Association of Temporary and Staffing Services in Alexandria, Va.
“In a 1997 profile we did of our 1,600 member companies, 12 percent of their workers were retirees,” said Steinberg. “People are living longer and need money to fill financial gaps of Social Security, but most of our retirees do temp work to be busy and have contact with other people. It’s a win-win situation because temporaries are in demand at a time when there are fewer new entrants to the work force and there is a growing skills shortage.”
Gordon J. Bingham, senior vice president of Olsten Staffing, headquartered in Melville, N.Y., saw the influx of mature workers and retirees in 1994.
“Seniors work in temporary jobs across the board,” said Bingham, whose company had $5 billion in sales in 1997. “A lot of people were sliced out of jobs by downsizing and took early retirement. But it turned out, for some, that retirement wasn’t as much fun as they thought it would be. They still needed to feel productive. And for many, when they stopped having a job they felt their identity was lost too.”
Bingham says clients today are particularly receptive to hiring older workers. “Seniors have experience, a high level of dependability, a good attitude, a strong work ethic and are friendly to customers and co-workers,” he said.
And that’s why temporary agencies now actively recruit retirees. In 1987, Kelly Services introduced Encore, a recruitment program to “inform mature workers about advantages of temp work,” according to Cathy J. Kolf, Chicago area manager for Kelly Services, based in Troy, Mich.
“We realized there was a lot of expertise and knowledge out there, a valuable pool of people–and we wanted them,” said Kolf, who is located in Downers Grove. She reports 13 percent of the temporary service’s workers are over 50 years old.
“As part of the Encore program, we formed a partnership with the American Association of Retired Persons and give memberships to qualified employees,” she said.
Kolf observes that seniors who work for Kelly “want to add something to their lives. Many of them want to start new careers, and temp services allow them to do that.”
Freedom of choice and the desire for “fun” money drew Sheldon C. Kaplan, age 69, out of retirement in 1995 after one year of “taking it easy.”
Kaplan, of Bloomington, Ill, was an industrial engineer for 45 years. His wife, Betty Kaplan, 67, a human resource executive, retired at the same time.
“At first, we traveled a lot–our children are scattered all over–but then we felt we wanted to do something to keep busy,” said Kaplan.
The Kaplans work together for Kelly Services three or four days a month doing registrations for seminars and meetings. They earn from $9,000 to $11,000 a year.
