Archives for Employment

The graying of America’s workforce is an oft-reported megatrend that is yet to shake up the workplace or economy. Will 2008 be the year that mass numbers of Baby Boomers dust off their golf clubs?

There’s a lot of speculation about the repercussions of this shift. In theory a lot of good jobs will become available as younger workers try to fill the gaps left behind by retiring boomers. From what I have seen, however, boomers don’t always shut down their careers at 62.

According to a Deloitte report the ramifications of the graying workforce are a bit more profound than whether that corner office will become available next year:

“By 2008, a wealth of skills and experience will begin to disappear from the job market. The first members of the Baby Boom generation will turn 62, the average retirement age in the large, developed economies of North America, Europe and Asia. By 2050, 40 percent of Europe’s total population and 60 percent of its working age population will be people over 60.With mounting pension obligations and shrinking workforces, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Japan could face economic crises. As management guru Peter Drucker has suggested, the confluence of a bulging aged population and a shrinking supply of youth is unlike anything that has happened since the dying centuries of the Roman Empire.”

“We are about to face a demographically driven shortfall in labor that will make the late 1990s seem like a minor irritation,” says Anthony Carnevale, former Chairman of the National Commission for Employment Policy, in Deloitte’s report.

Perhaps. But many Baby Boomers will continue to work until they’re 70, except of course for those forced to retire or those who have the money to bail out of the workforce (and most of the wealthy ones are off employment rolls by now).

What’s ominous for employers is the enormous burden of healthcare coverage for seniors. Healthcare benefits were the central issue in the recent strike by United Auto Workers against General Motors. Though controversial, other employers may mirror GM’s approach to dealing with its aging workforce.