Depending on your financial situation, another program that may help is the Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP). Also sponsored by the Department of Labor, SCSEP offers access to training and part time job placements in a wide variety of community service positions such as day care centers, senior centers, governmental agencies, schools, hospitals, libraries and landscaping centers.

To qualify, participants must be over 55, unemployed and have poor employment prospects. To learn more or locate a program in your area visit www.doleta.gov/seniors or call 877-872-5627.

Work at home

If you’re interested in working at home, there are many opportunities depending on your skills, but be careful of rampant work-at-home scams that offer big paydays without much effort.

Some of the more popular work-at-home jobs include “customer service agents” who fields calls from their employers’ customers and prospective customers – you don’t place telemarketing calls. Agents earn an average of $8 to $15 an hour and many also receive incentives and commission, too. To find these jobs see arise.com, alpineaccess.com, liveops.com and workingsolutions.com.

If you have good typing skills there are “transcriptionist” jobs that pay around $10 per hour for typing verbatim accounts of board meetings, presentations, conference calls, etc. Companies that hire transcriptionists are tigerfish.com, ubiqus.com and ctran.com.

And if you have a college degree, online “tutoring” or “proofreading” jobs are always available. See tutor.com to find tutoring opportunities which pay between $10 and $15 per hour.

Or, if you have some writing or editing experience, proofreading pays $12 to $20 per hour. See firstediting.com and cactusglobal.com to look for proofreading jobs.

For more work at home ideas and resources, see retiredbrains.com and click on the “Work from Home” tab on the left side of the page.

Start a business

If you’re interested in starting a small business but could use some help getting started, the U.S. Small Business Administration offers tips, tools and free online courses that you can access at sba.gov.

Send your senior questions to: Savvy Senior, P.O. Box 5443, Norman, OK 73070, or visit SavvySenior.org. Jim Miller is a contributor to the NBC Today show and author of “The Savvy Senior” book.