Retire? Not These Folks

Sept. 2, 2007 — -- It's 10:30 a.m. on a hot summer Friday and about two dozen traders in dull-colored smocks are arrayed in and around "the pit" -- the shallow, rounded trench where cotton futures are bought and sold at the New York Board of Trade. They're watching television monitors displaying cotton prices while waving wildly, shouting out their bids.

It's capitalism in action -- frenetic action.

At one edge of the pit stands a grey-haired, slightly stooped man. He's somewhat more composed than the others and when he barks his orders his voice betrays the hint of a Southern accent. He's been doing this for 30 years, trading for himself in the pit and at its two prior locations in lower Manhattan, including the World Trade Center. The man is Jim Phillips, and at 78, he is the oldest trader on the floor by nearly two decades.

"I love the job, and I love the challenge, and I love the people, and I love the activity, getting up and having to get out of bed," he said.

Retirement? That word isn't in Phillips's vocabulary.

"What would I do?" he added with a wide-eyed expression of mock incredulity.

Phillips is among millions of older Americans choosing to keep working rather than retiring. He has made a very good living buying and selling cotton futures and he vows to keep doing it for as long as he is physically capable.

"I guess as long as I can walk up here and stand up," he said, "and as long as I don't go bananas."

"He's a very active man who doesn't want to sit around and do nothing," said cotton trader Jewel Weiss, 60. "I mean, it's hard to do nothing."

Whether by volition or necessity, Americans are re-defining how they spend their golden years. These days, 70 may not be the new 60, as one variation of the popular saying goes. When it comes to work, 70 may be the new 50 or even 40.

A study this year by the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute reports that 30 percent of Americans between the ages of 65 and 69 are now employed, compared to 18 percent in 1985. The trend is expected to continue. A University of Chicago survey of 38- to 52-year-olds found that 79 percent planned to work past age 65.

"It's no longer that a job is just something you do, go home forget about," said Steve Slon, editor of AARP The Magazine. "It's something that I do, that I care about, that involves me, that engages me. It's something you don't want to walk away from."

Read more about the trend at USAToday.com by CLICKING HERE. And watch a full report tonight on "World News." Check your local listings for air times.

According to another survey, older workers have a high degree of job satisfaction. Seventy-one percent of workers over 65 said they are "very satisfied" with their job.

The picture is not entirely rosy. Many older Americans say they are working later in life because they have to. At a time when pensions are disappearing and health care costs skyrocketing, they need a job for the medical benefits or income, or both.

Arlene Accardi, 69, works three days a week as a nurse at St. Catharine's Hospital in Smithtown, on New York's Long Island. She's been there 30 years and loves what she does.

"Just to sit at home and do nothing doesn't make sense," she said.

But there is also a practical reason too for her continuing to work.

"I do love what I do, and I do love to be giving of myself," she said during a break at the Endoscopy Clinic. "But you're also working for financial gain, and the gain that I get by working is medical expenses for my health insurance."

In Berkeley, Calif., Alice Waters, 63, the owner of the famous Chez Panisse restaurant, goes to work every morning. As her small army of chefs and sous-chefs prepare the day's offerings, she is right beside them overseeing the cooking, sampling the soup, salad or entree to make sure each dish is just right.

Like Phillips, Waters has no plans to stop working anytime soon.

"It's just incomprehensible to me," she said. "I mean, this is time when I feel like I have a lot to offer, especially to young people here at the restaurant."

Her work has been her pleasure since 1971 when she opened Chez Panisse, a short distance from the University of California campus (she's a Berkeley graduate herself, class of 1967).

Waters is credited with revolutionizing American cuisine with bold, creative use of fresh, local seasonal vegetables and fruits. And it has paid off quite well. Waters doesn't have to work. She works because she wants to.

"I want my job to be of interest to me my whole life," she said. "The idea of having a job that you work at all your life that you don't like and then do something [else] when you are much older and less capable -- I mean, I find that a very strange way of living, of separating work and play because they really need to go together. That sort of pleasure of work is really important."