I just found myself writing a rather lengthy comment on Kathleen Dodaro's blog entry about recruiting older workers, and realized that some of the information might be interesting here. Ms Dodaro wrote a post about recruiting older workers (baby-boomers) who were interested in rejoining the workforce because they had had some crisis and needed the income. (There is to be a Part II to her blog entry, about how/when organizations should actively recruit older workers.)

My response:

As someone who has been running an employment website for older workers for almost 5 years now, I think you might be missing 70% of older workers here (since our annual surveys of older workers say that only 30% of them are going back to work for the 3 reasons you've listed here).

70% of the time - at least in Canada, and at least among our 25,000 registered job-seekers - older workers are going back to work for one basic reason: they are bored out of their minds. They raced to the retirement finish line, because they thought that was what they were supposed to do, but then 6 months in, they've renovated the house and tidied up the garden and look around and think "I'm only 60 - I can't do this for the next 25 years or I will go insane."

And that's when they start to think about going back to work.

As far as recruiting older workers is concerned, well, that's another matter. 90% of the time, we're seeing organizations ONLY start to think about older workers because they're desperate: they can't get enough students to do the part-time work; they've got maternity leaves to fill and no younger workers interested in a 6-month contract; or they've got some legacy systems that only some 25-year mainframe veteran knows how to use.

Yes, it's changing a little - in the past 18 months we're seeing employers much more interested in older workers than they used to be; but again, that's more to do with desperation than anything else.

Anyway, sorry to evangelize here - but with no established paradigm for older workers in the workforce, I think it's important to address some of these things.

There's no question that the next 12 months are going to be an interesting time in the US - and probably also in Canada - as the shrinking workforce meets a shrinking economy, thus throwing the newfound desire for older workers into some doubt.

In the past couple of years, employers have been increasingly interested in the 50+ demo as a great source of hidden talent, since the 'normal' talent market has become so competitive. But of course the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US has set off a chain of events (and we're kidding ourselves if we think the effects won't be felt in Canada - or that they aren't, already) that will continue to reverberate for the next 12-24 months at least - and how will that affect the talent market as a whole, and, in turn, the demand for older workers?

I feel like I'm the only one asking this question at the moment, but if anyone else wants to chime in, go right ahead...