Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 13, 1995 TAG: 9510130043
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Virginia Woods is just plain tired of sitting around.
"I'm getting so bored," said the 66-year-old, who retired last year after working 34 years in the lab at Community Hospital of Roanoke Valley.
She went to an Older Worker Job Fair at the Virginia Employment Commission on Thursday morning in search of a part-time job - something that would let her work with sick people, she said.
"This'll get me a little extra income and get me out of the house," said Woods, sitting down at a desk to fill out an application for Camelot Hall nursing home.
The job fair, sponsored by the VEC and the League of Older Americans Area Agency on Aging, drew 29 area employers. Ron Boyd, director of personnel and training for the LOA, said he expected 300 to 350 job seekers to attend the three-hour event.
Like Woods, most of the job seekers were looking for part-time work, something to fill their days and supplement their pensions. But a few were in search of full-time jobs.
"Makes me feel a little bit better, knowing that I'm not the only one in this situation," said Roanoker Bill Smith, 59, as he surveyed the line of people waiting to talk to a representative of the Transkrit Corp. "Going on 60 years old, it's going to be almost impossible to find a full-time job."
Smith shuffled through the stack of papers he was carrying and pulled out a multi-page resume. In addition to holding several short-term jobs, he had spent almost 20 years in the Navy and another 20 with Dominion Bank, where he had worked his way up to collection department manager before retiring in 1992.
"It's getting harder and harder," he said. There are plenty of part-time, $5-an-hour jobs out there, he said, but few openings for someone with his experience.
Many of the employers said the region's low unemployment rate is driving them to untraditional sources - such as the job fair - to look for qualified applicants who want to work part time.
Freida Mabe, personnel and training manager at the Kmart store on Franklin Road, said it's silly for employers to shy away from hiring older workers simply because they may not stay with the company for more than a few years.
"It's no different from hiring someone who's in high school or college," she said. "You know you'll only have them for a few years, too." And older workers are usually more reliable and better at dealing with difficult customers than are those 18- or 19-year-olds, she said.
Despite the enthusiasm about hiring older workers that was expressed by Mabe and the other recruiters, there doesn't seem to be a massive return to work by people in this age group, said Diane Herz, an economist at the National Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington, D.C. More older Americans may work if they could find higher-paying opportunities, she said, or if they could stay with their pre-retirement employer on a half-time schedule.
According to 1993 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 393,000 of Virginia's 1.2 million residents age 55 and over are employed. These workers account for 12.3 percent of all Virginia workers. An additional 8,000 people age 55 and older are unemployed.
Unemployment figures tend to be lower for people in this age group than for the general population, Herz said, because the statistics include only people who are actively searching for work. Many older Americans either don't intend to work or quit looking for jobs after brief searches.
Marjorie Skidmore, the VEC's job services manager in Roanoke, said fewer than 4 percent of the office's clients are 55 or older. She said some older people might be intimidated by the job-seeking process.
"We hope that now they'll keep coming back," she said.
by CNB