There are many health care job opportunities for the flood of retirees who are reentering the workforce. The main motivator for the big workforce return appears to be the ailing economy. With pensions and other retirement funds looking more like goose eggs than nest eggs in some cases, senior citizens are returning to the security of steady paychecks.

For these reasons and undoubtedly more, a survey by Putnam Investments recently revealed that 7 million previously retired Americans have returned to work. Returning seniors aren’t necessarily coming back to the same jobs they originally retired from either.

A federal program funded by the recent government stimulus package called “Experience Works” offers job training and placement services to senior citizens. AARP offers a similar government-funded program. The abundance of health care jobs needing to be filled offers a variety of exciting opportunities for returning seniors.

The job training aspect of the federal employment programs makes it easy for previous retirees to jump back into health care jobs such as medical transcriptionist, medical billing and coding, pharmacy assistant, medical secretary, home health aide, phlebotomist and many other positions.

There may be a slight period of adjustment for seniors who worked all or most of their life in the same job or at least the same career. With the unprecedented flexibility and opportunities offered by the health care sector, workers may now be retiring from their third, fourth or even fifth lifetime career by time they retire from good.

The major advantage these seniors have over the younger workers is a lifetime of experience, knowledge, skills and general wisdom that is easily an asset in the field of health care, where a little common sense and problem solving skills can take you a long way in any health care job.