It's back to school for older workers
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"Many of the people we worked with qualified for some state or national funding or student loans, especially if they were laid off, hadn't worked for a long time or were economically disadvantaged. That was the assistance that many of them needed help with."

There's no data yet on the success of the program, which is still in its infancy, but, Waite says, "We're sensing from the individual stories we have heard that it's a success."

Help with re-careering
Central Florida Community College in Ocala sits in a retiree-rich area and claims one of the oldest established job-education programs for seniors in the nation.

"We have been serving senior citizens since the early 1990s in a pretty significant way," says Jerone Gamble, executive manager of continuing education for the college. "In our re-careering program, we have a workshop where we talk about returning to work and what they can expect. We help them develop a new resume and show them how to apply for jobs online."

CFCC conducts monthly senior job fairs, Gamble says, where senior-friendly employers recruited by the college gather to meet with older students looking to re-enter the work force.

Like all community colleges, CFCC doesn't have age limits on degree programs, and seniors are welcome to apply. They can get help doing that through Pathways to Living, Learning and Serving, a center that brings together all of the college's activities for students aged 50 or older.

"Pathways," says Gamble, "is a noncredit division of the college. But if someone is interested in a degree, we can help them get connected to pursue that option."

"More recently, we have developed some training programs to prepare senior citizens to go into a second career, " he says. Examples, Gamble says, include personal and corporate tax-preparation courses and customer-service and call-center training, CFCC's most recent initiative.

"For our call-center training, our people worked with call centers in the area to design a curriculum that would meet their needs."

Help meeting employers' needs
Through its annual Mature Workers Conference, held in partnership with the local work force board, CFCC keeps in touch with local employers. "One thing we've noticed is that older workers want to work in a different way, at a different pace," Gamble says. "We're trying to get employers to understand that they need to make accommodations for that and design jobs that take advantage of the skills older people have."

A lot of mature workers can't afford to retire, says Abushakrah, and some who have been victimized by downsizing before they intended to retire need to find a way to keep working, at least until they are eligible for Medicare.

For employers who are facing a nationwide skill shortage, she says, keeping these older workers in the work force could be a blessing -- especially since more stringent immigration quotas are making it difficult to fill those gaps with workers from outside the U.S.

"The aging work force has great potential for filling that need for higher-skilled positions," Abushakrah says. In public utilities, for example, long-time workers on the verge of retiring or who have already retired "have knowledge about certain systems that younger people don't have," she says. "That's years of experience walking out the door. So accommodating older workers is actually a win-win situation to help both employers and their aging employees reach their goals."