Sales and Marketing
Everready Glass
Sales Reps Trades/Construction
RANCHO RESORT
MAINTANANCE POSITION Administrative & Professional
Jorgensen Brooks Group
Counselor Administrative & Professional
Tucson Urban League
CEO/President Finance and Accounting
Charles E. Gillman Company
Accounting Specialist Mechanical
Komatsu Equipment Co
Resident Field Mechanic

NEW YORK — As the huge baby boom generation surges toward retirement age, an unsettling issue grows ever more pressing: finding the work force to tend to the millions of boomers who will someday need ongoing care because of physical and mental frailties.

Federal statistics suggest that 3 million people work in direct-care jobs, mainly with the elderly, as nursing assistants, home health aides and personal-care aides. Experts project there will be demand for nearly 1 million more of these workers in the next decade, and perhaps a total of 3 million more by 2030.

Wages for these jobs, as of 2005, averaged less than $10 per hour, and a quarter of the work force had no health insurance. Groups advocating for better compensation were stunned this week when the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the nation's 1 million home-care workers are not entitled to overtime pay under federal law.

The ruling "underscores how unprepared we are to care for the millions of seniors who will want to live at home instead of institutions," said Gerry Hudson, a vice president of the Service Employees International Union.

The union already represents 400,000 caregivers; it hopes to expand those ranks by touting its success in states including California, where extensive unionization has been followed by higher pay and lower turnover.

Some states are providing health coverage for uninsured caregivers. Community colleges, with funds from state agencies and the Labor Department, are beefing up training programs for home-care workers.

Vermont is experimenting with a Choices for Care program in which it pays any caregiver — including a friend or relative — $10 an hour to tend to an elderly person who might otherwise be forced to a nursing home.

Arizona has created the position of direct-care work-force specialist for the Aging and Adult Services division of the state Department of Economic Security to help solve the caregiver shortage.

The work-force specialist works with other state offices, elder-care providers and community agencies to measure the caregiver shortage, develop training standards for caregivers in different settings, and devise a pay scale to attract and retain more people to the field.

The number of Arizonans 65 or older is expected to double by 2020, and the result will be "a very different world," according to a 2004 state report about how government must change to serve an aging Arizona.

By 2020, one in four Arizona residents will be 65 or older. When the report was written, by contrast, about one in six Arizonans were seniors.

SOURCE: Arizona Daily Star