ITTLETON, Colo. - For John A. Lemoine, retirement has been hard work. Forced to take an early pension package at AT&T three years ago, Mr. Lemoine, 54, a former building manager who once made more than $70,000 a year handling the operations of several AT&T sites, soon found that retirement was something he just could not afford.
To supplement the greatly reduced pension he received upon his retirement, he first took an $11-an-hour job as a maintenance worker at the Sam's Club up the road from his home here. He retrained as an X-ray technician, and began earning $17.50 an hour as a part-time radiology technician for several clinics. Still unable to make ends meet, he also took a full-time job as a security guard for an hourly wage of $10.50.
"I put in for other jobs, too," Mr. Lemoine said. "You'd be surprised who won't hire you because of your age."
Employers had better get used to seeing older people's résumés.
As numerous companies across the country withdraw retiree medical and dental benefits while others switch to less generous retirement plans, many aging workers who had expected to ease comfortably out of the labor force in their 50's and early 60's are discovering that they do not have the financial resources to support themselves in retirement. As a result, a lot more of them are returning to work.
Since the mid-1990's, older people have become the fastest-growing portion of the work force. The Labor Department projects that workers over 55 will make up 19.1 percent of the labor force by 2012, up from 14.3 percent in 2002.
Until recently, most economists said that older people were being lured back into the labor force largely because of opportunities growing out of the vibrant economy of the 1990's. But these days, they say, many such Americans are being drawn to work out of necessity rather than choice.
As the nation gears up for a fundamental debate over the future of Social Security, these circumstances hint at potential changes in the federal program that supports more than 40 million elderly Americans.
Just as companies are seeking ways to reduce their roles in financing former employees in retirement, many economists say that the Social Security program should also scale back in response to the aging of the population.
Some have pointed out that continuing to raise the official retirement age in step with increases in Americans' average longevity could probably guarantee Social Security's solvency forever.
"Policies promoting longer working life could ameliorate some of the potential demographic stresses," Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, told a conference of economists and policy makers in Jackson Hole, Wyo., last year. "Early initiatives to address the economic effects of baby-boom retirements could smooth the transition to a new balance between workers and retirees."
To some extent, that transition is already under way - although not in the way Mr. Greenspan, 78 himself, proposed. As they stay longer in their jobs or peruse the help-wanted ads for post-retirement employment, Americans are reversing what had been a nearly century-long decline in the participation of older people in the work force.
"Everyone that I talked to is looking at working part time," said Jim Drummond, 59, a 37-year veteran of US Airways in Pittsburgh who retired on Jan. 1 and whose pension plan recently failed and was taken over by the federal government. "The pension is not enough unless you are single and living alone."
Gerald Fronek, 62, an electrician for Lucent Technologies in Lockport, Ill., now plans to retire in April, five years after his original plan was thwarted by the collapse of Lucent's stock in 2000, which took most of his lifetime savings with it.
"I was dealt a bad card," Mr. Fronek said. "I just have to forget about that and move ahead."
Necessity, Not Choice
Made to carry more of the burden of their retirement, many retirees say they feel that a social compact between workers and employers - a set of expectations established over the second half of the 20th century - is being dismantled.
