As they cope with a struggling economy and, in some cases, obliterated retirement savings, more retirees are going back to work, and organizations established specifically to help retired citizens find employment say they’re seeing more interest in various job-seeking services.

RetirementJobs.com -- the number one career site for job-seekers over the age of 50, as measured by traffic, the number of employers, and the number of jobs -- saw  its visitor count nearly quadruple from August to February, when it hit 714,000.

Bob Skladany, vice president and chief career counselor for RetirementJobs.com, said “people who are retired and had no expectation of working again appear to be returning to the work force or job search in incredibly large numbers.”

Skladany said when the numbers began to spike, the company started calling visitors at random to find out why, and found it’s mostly “retirees who have to get back to work.”

Of those surveyed, over 60% of retirees returning to work said they’re looking for full-time work. Before the summer of 2008, Skladany said job seekers were looking for full-time jobs only about 25% of the time.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that the nation’s unemployment rate is 8.1% as of February -- but that includes only people who are actively looking for work, not those who have given up on the search.

“If you take the number of people working part time who want full-time work, the underemployed, plus discouraged workers, you’d get an unemployment rate of about 14%,” Skladany said.

The Bureau of Labor statistics estimates there are a little over 12 million people unemployed in the U.S. today, not including “discouraged workers” and the underemployed. Right now, says Skladany, there are about four million job openings, or three people for every one job. 

A 2008 survey by the MetLife Mature Market Institute found that one in four people over the age of 62 said they wouldn’t retire due to the economy. In 2007, the statistics were one in five. John Migliaccio, the Director of Research for the Institute, says more people are waiting to retire to get their full Social Security Benefits.

“In our survey, we asked people at what age they’d like to retire, and what age they think they’d be able to. 45-year-olds we surveyed said they’d want to retire at 64 or 65. 62-year-olds said 66 or 67,” Migliaccio said.

The survey focused on Baby Boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964. Migliaccio said that the “leading edge Boomers,” those born in 1946, are becoming “more realistic about retiring, feeling most concerned about affording health care and staying productive. The “trailing edge” boomers, those born in 1964, are most concerned about outliving their retirement money and having to work either full or part time.”

The AARP for teamed up with RetirementJobs.com to expand its online career services for the over 50 set in August of 2008, allowing AARP’s nearly 40 million members to use the site’s search tools at no cost.

Joe Dirac, who leads one of AARP’s WorkSearch sites in New York City, said that “We run three separate programs… offering online self-help to virtually everyone age forty and above. We picked age 40 because that’s when you start to see incidents of age discrimination.”

The AARP offers a service, the Senior Community Service Employment Program, which is government-funded and has sites in 22 states and Puerto Rico.

“We’ve seen a big uptick in participants in that program,” says Dirac, “and $120 million of the economic stimulus package went to national sponsors to help expand it.”

Dirac says the organization has “a waiting list of people to come on these programs. We’re seeing more and more people looking for that service, people who had jobs recently and are looking for employment.”

Another AARP service, the Training Assistance Program, gives financial assistance for below median-income individuals training to enter a new industry or develop a new skill. Dirac says the AARP has seen an increase in participants across the board for their employment services. 

The job search for retirees is a challenging endeavor, even without age discrimination factored in. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reported earlier this month that the number of age-discrimination allegations by employees have hit a record high.

For fiscal year 2007, the EEOC reports 19,103 charges were filed under the Age Discrimination and Employment Act, 16,134 of which were resolved. For fiscal year 2008, that number rose to 24,582, with 21,415 resolved, and $82.8 million in monetary benefits recovered for charging parties.