There Goes your Retirement

With their finances in shambles, many in the 60-plus crowd are looking for jobs. Here's how some are finding work -- and adjusting to new lives.

By KELLY GREENE

The advice in recent months -- from financial planners, economists and educators -- has been unvarying: Retirees whose nest eggs have cracked wide open should go out and find a job.

Easier said than done.

Across the country, retirees who never imagined themselves returning to the workplace are polishing résumés and knocking on employers' doors. The problem: Most are running smack into the worst job market in almost three decades. Nearly 5% of workers age 55 and older were unemployed in December, a 58% jump from a year earlier and the highest percentage since 1983, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Of course, the idea of "working in retirement" isn't new. In the past decade, many older Americans have started businesses or sought out part-time employment -- sometimes to help with household budgets, but frequently to follow long-deferred dreams. Today, though, with retirement savings in shambles and the economy in turmoil, job searches have taken on a new sense of urgency -- and, in some cases, desperation.

"That's all people talk about...[that] they have to go back to work," says Dan Sweeney, 62 years old, a former court officer who lives in the Villages, a large retirement community in central Florida. Mr. Sweeney has been working part time as a ranger at a local golf course, where he drives around in a cart making sure the pace of play is what it should be, handing out water and generally helping golfers. Last month, he started doing direct-marketing work at home, too, but he's also looking for a job with better pay.

Meanwhile, a neighbor -- who had invested his nest egg with Bernard L. Madoff, the New York financier accused of running a giant Ponzi scheme -- is trying to land work similar to Mr. Sweeney's. "He lost his life savings, and he was applying for [a] little golf-course job," Mr. Sweeney says.

Despite sizable hurdles, some retirees are finding work. How did they land those jobs, the first that some had applied for in several decades? What are the best and worst parts of their newfound employment? We spoke with dozens of older adults who had retired -- but who returned to work during the past year as the recession deepened. Here are several of their stories: