Unemployed, Need Work

When it comes to aging, most seniors rank finances as one of their greatest concerns. Continuing to work or re-entering the workforce is a solution for many seniors. When we were younger we worked to make money. Many of us also found a purpose in life, or at the very least, a way to keep busy. But work for seniors is not always easy to find. However, working seniors say that the extra income helps solve many financial issues. As a senior, does working make sense? What are the issues? What do you need to know about the issues?

What Seniors Should Think About Beofre Going Back To Work

Before going back to work, it’s important you know your capabilities. If you want to be a working senior, ask yourself these questions. Can you lift things? How much can you lift? Can you drive? How many hours can you drive before getting tired? Can you walk without pain and discomfort? How far and for how long can you walk? Assessing your physical and cognitive health can best be done by your physician. Before going back to work, think about what you might be doing and check with the Doctor to make sure you are capable of doing it.

Reasons To Work

There are a lot of reasons for seniors to work. Here are some of the more common ones.

Extra Money

Many seniors find that after they retire, they’ve underestimated their expenditures or overestimated their savings. In either case, they need extra money to meet their spending desires.

Better or More Comprehensive Health Insurance

After age sixty-five seniors are eligible for Medicare. Medicare provides comprehensive health insurance but doesn’t pay for everything. In many cases, Medicare only covers 80% of the costs a patient incurs. That’s many seniors cover “gap” or “supplemental” policies that cover that 20%.

Keeping Physically & Cognitively Active

Medical research shows that staying physically and cognitively active can keep seniors healthier, longer.

Connect With The Community

As seniors get older they tend to disengage from society. We can become isolated. Isolation can lead to loneliness. Loneliness and disengagement are problems for seniors. Working is one way to delay or avoid this reality. 

For Fun

Many working seniors are doing it for fun. When they stop, their life isn’t as fun. Going back to work in the right job can often create that sense of fun.

It’s important to know why your heading back to work. Not all jobs will offer the same advantages. Some will offer senior’s healthcare, but most will not. Some jobs pay much better than others, but often require specialized skills.

Back To Work Process

Going back to work is not hard, figuring out the why, where and what can be. Here’s the process we heard from working seniors we met that successfully went back to work.

Step 1 – Why Do We Want To Go Back To Work

Why are you going back to work? Is it for fun, health care, money, or community engagement? You can certainly have more than one reason, but knowing why you’re going back to work starts the process. If you do have more than one reason prioritize the reasons and give them a weight. Like any job, it’s hard to know exactly how we’ll find the experience until we’ve spent some time doing the job.

Step 2 – What Can Working Seniors Do?

It’s hard to get and do a job when you don’t have the required skills. Think of jobs that require specific training like engineer, HVAC repairman, plumber, truck driver, electrician, lawyer, stockbroker and doctor. No training, no skills, no shirt, no job. There are other jobs that you may not be trained in but can probably do. Think of jobs like greeter, crossing guard, movie extra, caregiver, babysitter, and data entry. These are jobs with skills you probably have, or that your future employer can quickly evaluate to determine if you fit their skill needs.

Technically, you probably want to create a skills inventory.

See https://ccv.edu/documents/2013/11/skills-inventory-worksheet.pdf/

or type “seniors and skill inventory” into Google. This inventory can assist you in assessing what jobs you can do.

Step 3 – What Do Working Seniors Want To Do?

Once you know what you can do, it’s time to as “What do I want to do?”

Step 4 – Find The Job

Indeed, CareerBuilder, Monster all offer free job searches and search tools.

Step 5 – Application & Interview

There are many sites on the web that help seniors write resumes and prepare for interviews.

Try the following Google searches:

What Carmen and I learned in our research is that most Americans have a prejudice towards seniors, especially those re-entering the workplace. The negative prejudice often manifests in beliefs that older workers lack technology skills, have less energy, need more time off, aren’t “woke,” can’t learn new skills and need more training. But we also found positive prejudice that manifests in beliefs that older workers are more disciplined, show up on time, don’t make excuses, better understand customers, better at completing tasks, and are more independent.

The net effect of the prejudice probably means that you have to stay focused on how you’d do the job or can do the job given your work experience and skills. That means knowing what the job entails and the employer’s perception of job performance.

Discovering Job Details

What the job involves can be discovered by reading online reviews of what the job is like and interviewing people performing the job. Your employer’s perception of performance is a bit harder to understand. Sometimes a person who has the job can tell you. Other times you may need to try and become the customer that you’d be interacting with to get an idea of what experience the worker is creating or trying to create. For example, if the job is for a front desk receptionist, go to the employer’s business and interact with the front desk worker. What are they doing? How do they do it? Could you do it? Ho would you do it better?

We are providing some rough hourly wage estimates. These can vary dramatically by geographic area, the Ager’s current skill set, and actual experience.

High Paying Jobs For Working Seniors

Location Based Jobs – You Go To A Workplace

The jobs below are common for working seniors that go an office or site loctaon.

Work From Home Jobs

Flexible Hour Jobs For Working Seniors

Common Senior Jobs

Volunteer Jobs For Seniors

Other Resources For Working Seniors

Great job site for older workers – Wokforce50