Need for Skilled Workers Is Fast Approaching
[12 September 2005 - ThirdAge] Retirement meant anything but kicking back for John Sayles. At age 69, six months after his retirement party, his company asked him to join a team of engineers in war-torn Baghdad, where he worked 12-hour days, seven days a week on a reconstruction project. "It's the best of all worlds," said Sayles, now 71, a planner who still consults occasionally for the Iowa-based firm from which he retired, Stanley Consultants Inc. "You never know when the phone rings who it's going to be." Programs that tap retirees' skills and keep older workers on the job longer would seem to be a natural solution to the looming shortage of skilled workers related to the baby boomer generation's approaching retirement. ...