"In the past five months," Clarke explains, "we have seen at least half a dozen 80 and over because they cannot make it."

The alabaster Dairy Queen is a client for AWARE's Shelby County office. The managers try to keep a variety of ages working here..

"It helps having an older workforce here to kind of help guide the younger workers," says Chris Buckmaster

"We want permanent workers, full-time workers who are leaders, who are older as well as the young people, also. We couldn't't do it without them either," says Bob Shiller.

They've had two job vacancies posted with AWARE since April* for a cake decorator and a dining room attendant, but no one has applied.

"At that age they are very proud," Clarke tells us, "and they don't want to let people know what kind of situation that they're in."

Situations so bad that a lot of jobs are not enough to help them out. What do they do if that's the case?

"Well, they do like a lot of them have to do," says Clarke. "They have to file bankruptcy."

According to the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, bankruptcies for seniors aged 75 to 84 went up by 433% from 1991 to 2007.