By John Eckberg
Enquirer staff writer

Joe Gatto, 72, gives a customer a gallon of paint he mixed at McCabe Do It Center Hardware. (Meggan Booker/The Enquirer)

SYCAMORE TOWNSHIP - Dave Meyers, 72, retired from a career as an over-the-road trucker for exactly six months.

The rising cost of prescription drugs and other household needs meant Meyers had to find work to make ends meet. So he has worked four days a week at McCabe Do it Center on Montgomery Road for the last two years.

While he's grateful for the job, Meyers also wishes he could relax and enjoy his lifetime of labor.

"Let me tell you, with rising prescription prices, groceries, gasoline, well, it's no Golden Years," Meyers said.

Co-worker and former retiree Joe Gatto, 72, of Madeira also felt the pinch of rising prices about eight years ago when he retired. But that's not what sent him back to the grind. He found a job at this hardware store because retirement was driving him crazy.

"I retired in January 1996 and had all these jobs to do around the house. By April, I was done, and I was going bonkers," he said.

A CLOSER LOOK

Why retirees go back to work AARP, formerly the American Association of Retired Persons, has an on-going survey of older workers ages 45-70, about expectations at work and during retirement. Among its findings: • Nearly 70 percent of pre-retirees plan to work part-time in their presumed retirement years or simply not retire. • About half plan to work when they are 70 years old or older. • Needing money is the top reason for pre- and working retirees to work during their retirement years, but two-thirds want to work to stay active. • More than one-third give care to a spouse, parent, grandchild or other. • Less than one-third look forward to full retirement. Source: AARP How they help employers A nationwide survey of 774 human resource directors found of companies that hire older workers: • 80% have less turnover. • 80% have less absenteeism. • 75% have higher levels of commitment. • 74% are more reliable. • 71% have as much ability to acquire new skills. • 62% are more creative and innovative. • 49% are more motivated. • 48% are more flexible/adaptable. Source: The Coming Global Workforce Crisis by Barry K. Spiker, Herbert Markley professor of management at Miami University

The motivation for these two workers at this neighborhood fix-it center differs, but both stories reflect a growing trend within the local and national work forces - since 1994, the number of workers age 65 and over has increased about 28 percent to 4.8 million.

Some of those numbers could be due to aging baby boomers. But retirees also are returning to work out of financial or psychological need.

The benefits are obvious: Firms gain experienced and loyal employees, while retirees supplement their pensions and Social Security with cash.

Jimmy Byes, owner of By-tel Inc., a Cincinnati-based commercial cleaning firm founded in 1990, seeks older workers as employees because they tend to be better workers, more reliable and motivated. He said he's seen an influx in the last four years and is personally moved by the initiative shown by some who have a real economic need.

"Some of these folks are back in the job market because they're starving," he said. "They're out there with arthritis or whatever ailment they might have. A lot are grandparents who have to raise their grandkids and need more money to do it."

Not all companies are willing to take on older workers, said Sara Rix, senior policy adviser for AARP, the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group for people older than 50.

"Age discrimination remains a problem," she said. "And if people are out of the work force for a year or more, skills can atrophy."

Knowing how to close

Gatto, a former sales manager with a wealth of experience from selling equipment worth tens of thousands of dollars, brought his sales tricks to the hardware store counter.

He knows about timeless approaches like The Puppy Dog Close - get a product into the hands of the buyer - and makes FABB - Feature, Advantages, Benefit, Benefit - a standard approach, particularly when selling to a reluctant customer.

"As long as I'm able to work, I will," Gatto said. "It would be boring sitting there looking at the house I live in."

In spite of the demographic shift, most companies prefer to take a wait-and-see approach. Fewer than 15 percent of Fortune 1000 companies have any kind of program to deal with retaining older workers.

But as large and small companies alike find that retired workers are a cost-effective option to fill out their labor force, experts predict that in the near future, firms in Ohio may have no choice but to hire the older employees.

That is OK with John Tepe, general manager and co-owner of McCabe Do it Center.

"(Sales) is in his skin," Tepe said of Gatto. "There's still a lot he can offer at this point in his life."

Worker shortage

Though more retirees have returned to work in increasing numbers, there may not be enough of them to fill out a looming worker shortage, experts predict.

Barry K. Spiker, the Markley Visiting Professor of Management at the Richard T. Farmer School of Business at Miami University, predicts that by 2010, Ohio will have a shortage of 459,930 workers as baby boomers retire and younger workers leave Ohio for other regions.

Another demographic trend at play is that people are simply living longer, which means greater health care costs and income needs.

Since 1935, when Social Security was created, a 65-year-old American could expect to live another 12 years. Today that worker can expect to live an additional 18 years, according to a study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

As lives lengthen and the cost of living climbs, many retirees find they cannot rely on personal savings anymore, either. In fact, many do not even have significant savings.

An Employee Benefit Research Institute survey earlier this year found only 21 percent of American households have accumulated more than $100,000 in retirement savings. One in three have saved nothing at all.

Kathy Keller, Ohio spokesperson for AARP, sees no mystery in why people of retirement age are returning to work or, in some cases, staying on the job after they qualify for retirement.

It's not boredom or because they miss a congenial workplace, she said. It's economics.

"People need the money," Keller said. "Sometimes it's because of health care. Prescription drugs in the last quarter alone have risen in price at three times the rate of inflation.

"People also return to work to get insurance coverage. But mostly it's because gas, food and prescription drugs have gone up."

They have the know-how

John Moser, 64, an avid West Side fisherman, spent the last four years retired from his job as an over-the-road truck driver and fishing whenever he wanted: down on the Ohio River or the Mitchell Memorial Forest lake. That is going to change.

He has returned to the work force as a part-time custodian at Westwood Methodist Church. Moser says he will have to watch his income from that job. If he earns too much money, he knows, it will be severely taxed.

"My wife is still working," Moser said. "My grandson is headed back to high school, and I guess I just didn't want to be by myself."

Companies that plan now to keep experienced employees on the payroll may be better off in the years to come.

"Dr. Robert N. Butler of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine sums it up best: In all of history, half of all human beings who have turned 65 are living today," Spiker said.

And Spiker discounted researchers who claim that the youngest and oldest workers are mistake-prone.

"Those researchers find that when people are young and dumb, they can't perform, that when people are old and moldy, they can't perform," Spiker said. "They believe that it's the 35- to 45-year-old age group where you find performance. Well, I'm out to prove that 50 years of management theory is wrong.

"Older workers have the know-how, and they're positively inclined to sharing the knowledge. It's called wisdom."

E-mail jeckberg@enquirer.com