It’s Time to Retire Retirement

A number of recent studies warn that the U.S. economy will experience widespread job vacancies that cannot be filled because of a shortfall of workers. It is true that employers will face new and more difficult challenges in recruiting and hiring than previous generations faced, but the challenges have to do with changes in the employment relationship, not a shortfall of workers caused by demographic changes. These developments have important and positive implications for older workers. More generally, the solutions to these recruiting and hiring challenges focus back on employers and their own human resource strategies. Recent Demographic Developments: The dominant demographic event of the last century, the baby boom’s entry into the labor market, preceded what became a long period of economic stagnation and slow growth in the economy. It was hard for many workers, especially young workers, to find jobs in this period and unemployment rates remained relatively high. Chronic and long-term unemployment of young workers in particular was common as was widespread over-qualification of workers for jobs. Evidence suggests that the rapid expansion of the workforce associated with the entry of the baby boom workers depressed their wages and lifetime earning opportunities. —Continued on Page