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Wake up, workplace: America needs those seniors--both now and later Date published: 11/6/2005
MONTCLAIR, N.J.--Over However, the latest figures show that jobless claims are already returning to their pre-hurricane lows. In fact, barring a major economic cataclysm, all indications are that a key demographic trend is creating conditions in which there may be too few, not too many, workers available over the next few decades. The 78 million baby boomers have made their presence felt at every stage of their lives. They crowded our kindergartens and grade schools in the 1950s and 1960s, overwhelmed college dorms and classrooms throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and then proceeded to supply American businesses with the largest and most educated group of employees in U.S. history. Now, the boomers might rock our society once again--this time with their absence--as they reach retirement age. The potential mass exodus of the boomers looms just as U.S. employers are starting to have a harder time finding employees--the jobless rate hit a four-year low of 4.9 percent in August, right before the hurricanes hit. And the American economy is adding more than 2 million new jobs per year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that there could be as many as 5 million to 6 million more jobs than available workers by 2008, and 7 million to 10 million more jobs by 2010. If the boomers walk out the door, they will take with them not just their numbers but their unparalleled skills, years of experience and training, plus a work ethic so strong that we had to invent terms like "workaholic" and "yuppie" to describe it. Simply put, U.S. businesses that wish to remain competitive must find a way to retain as many of these employees as possible. And they must do so in an era in which most workers over 65, about 85 percent at last count, are choosing not to work, even part time.
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