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Retired
and working ,
Victoria Sapienza of
Buffalo retired from her job with the city six years ago. Now, she's working
part time, too. And Vinny DiNatale of
Buffalo, a 68-year-old retired business owner now part-time Target employee,
isn't sure he'll ever really retire. "I'm going to be
here until I'm 85," Di-Natale said, "and then I'm out of
here." This isn't the
retirement you always imagined, but it's the reality for a growing number of
senior citizens. The desire to stay
active and boredom with retirement are part of the reason more senior
citizens are staying in the work force. But many others aren't sticking
around the office because they want to - they need to. Changing lifestyles
and economic pressures - such as the recent stock market losses that eroded
savings - are forcing retirees back to work and keeping senior citizens on
the job longer than they had anticipated. More than 13 percent
of people across the country 65 and older were employed or looking for work
in March 2002, according to a recent Census Bureau report. While still a
relatively small percentage of the senior citizen population, it was a 50
percent jump over 20 years ago. And the unsettling economy no doubt has
boosted those numbers since the Census Bureau's survey was done in 2002,
experts said. Many senior citizens
are taking minimum-wage service jobs: greeting customers at Wal-Mart, taking
orders at McDonald's or ringing up groceries at the supermarket, where the
work is part time and the hours are flexible, experts from the AARP said. "I needed to
supplement my pension and Social Security. They're both small," said
Sapienza, 69. After retiring from
the city's community development office, Sapienza ran a bookstore for a
couple of years. Most recently, the divorcee landed a job working in the
gift shop at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, but that ended last week and now
she's looking for another job. "When you have a
job making a nice salary and you go down to one-third of it, it's quite
hard," she said. The number of senior
citizens in the work place is expected to climb in the years ahead, and not
just because of the government's move to increase retirement age from 65 to
67 or concern over the solvency of Social Security. In fact, the notion of
working at least part time until late in life is now commonly accepted by
many from younger generations. But if you're anxious
to trade the daily grind for early retirement and a new set of golf clubs,
be prepared: Retirement isn't what it used to be. Paying the bills It's part of an
increasingly common attitude among workers who are resigned to the idea of
"bridge jobs," not only to provide social interaction but, more
importantly, help pay the bills late in life. For example: Helen
Buss, 67, of Orchard Park, works part time as a receptionist in West Seneca.
Sylvia Volk, 69, of
Buffalo, works two part-time jobs. Mancuso, 65, retired
as a manager at a Buffalo distribution center a few years ago. She receives $688 a
month in Social Security, has some savings in the bank and lives in an
apartment above her son's home, which helps keep down her budget. But she
took a part-time job at the Richmond-Summer Senior Center, where she
receives about $100 a week. "One of the
biggest reasons I went back to work was the money. I needed to work,"
Mancuso said. "It isn't much, but it helps." The rising cost of
health care plays a big part in the decision to continue working during the
retirement years, said Deborah Russell, manager of economic security and
work at the AARP in Washington. As more companies cut
or eliminate health insurance, retirees are re-entering the work force to
pick up or help pay for health care, Russell said. And despite having
Medicare, senior citizens are faced with the costly burden of paying for
their prescription drugs. Mancuso has been
paying about $200 a month for health coverage. "You take that
out of $688, and we're talking about very little money left," she said.
Maintaining a
lifestyle While more women have
returned to the work force after raising children, men 65 and older still
outnumber working elderly women in the Buffalo region by a 2-to-1 margin,
figures show. Part of this trend of
older workers is a result of the changing lifestyles of senior citizens,
said Pamela Krawczyk, Erie County's director of senior services. Many of today's
younger senior citizens are accustomed to a more comfortable lifestyle,
compared with previous generations of retirees, who may not have earned as
much during their working careers and were used to a more humble way of
life, Krawczyk said. These days, she said,
many senior citizens continue to work so they can afford the small luxuries,
such as traveling to visit children and grandchildren in other parts of the
country. "You like to have
a few dollars," Sapienza said. DiNatale, retired
several years ago from his business of manufacturing ceramic kilns. But he
soon took a part-time job stocking at Target on Delaware Avenue. It was in
part to keep busy, part out of necessity. He doesn't have a
pension, and while he and his wife don't live extravagantly, they like to do
something special now and then - a dinner out, maybe buying flowers for the
yard. "If you don't
like to do things, you can probably get by," DiNatale said. "But
it's about quality of life." Senior citizen
boom Once the baby boom
generation comes of age, the sheer size of that segment of the population is
expected to increase the number of senior citizens in the work place, said
Russell, the AARP expert. Besides, Russell said,
people are living longer, healthier lives, and those age 65 today could live
to be 85. "And that's a long time to be completely out of work,"
Russell said. A bit surprising,
however, is that the Buffalo Niagara region - which has one of the highest
shares of elderly in the nation - has a smaller percentage of senior
citizens in the work force, 10 percent, compared with the rest of the nation
at 13 percent. That may be because of
the local job market, a more frail elderly population unable to work, or a
region that hasn't realized the employment potential of this group, experts
suggest. In fact, while
lower-level jobs for senior citizens seem readily available in the retail
and service industries, senior citizens still aren't getting their due in
other parts of the local job sector, said Krawczyk, the senior services
director. "Ageism is still
out there," Krawczyk said. But for senior
citizens like DiNatale, retiring just isn't in the cards. "As long as I'm physically fit, I'll keep working," DiNatale said. "You get bored at home. How many reruns of Perry Mason can you watch? Copyright ©
2002 Global Action on Aging
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