These two programs specifically want older workers to fill their openings Gary Olson put in 32 years as an analytical chemist at Kodak in Rochester, N.Y., including stints in R&D and on digital innovations. “I had a great career there,” Olson says. “I was never bored.” But worn down by Kodak’s constant restructuring and layoffs, in January 2002, at 56, Olson took a generous buyout offer. He and his wife moved to Seattle, Wash. to be closer to their daughter and her family and Olson kicked back for a few years. In 2005, he spotted a Craigslist job posting by the National Asian Pacific Center on Aging for a “senior environmental employee” at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The Senior Environmental Employment Program and position were reserved for workers 55 and older. Intrigued, he applied. “I wasn’t going to do what I did for more than 30 years,” says Olson. “I wanted to do something different.” He got the job. The 2 Programs for Workers 55+ Ever heard of the EPA’s Senior Environmental Employment Program, which has been around for 31 years? How about the comparable, seven-year-old Agriculture Conservation Experienced Services Program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture? I hadn’t. These jobs are specifically designed to tap into the experience of boomers, yet not once in interviews for my Next Avenue column on job opportunities for people in their 50s and 60s did these programs or ones like them come up. (The idea for this column came from my editor who learned about them at the American Society on Aging’s recent Aging in America Conference. ) “Older workers are a largely untapped resource,” says Gregory Merrill, President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Older Worker Career Center,...
