Labor Shortage Predicted
By Kevin Smith, Staff Writer© Pasadena Star-News, March 27, 2010
In an economic climate in which millions of people are unemployed, it's tough to envision a worker shortage.
But a renowned labor economist projects that there will be more jobs than people to fill them in the United States by 2018.
Barry Bluestone, dean of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University, also says employers will lean heavily on workers older than 55 to help fill the labor shortage.
If the economy regains its health and there are no changes in immigration or labor force participation rates, Bluestone predicts that within the next eight years there could be at least 5 million potential job vacancies in the United States.
Nearly half of those vacancies - 2.4 million - will be in social sector jobs in education, health care, government and nonprofit organizations, according to Bluestone's report, "After the Recovery: Help Needed - The Coming Labor Shortage and How People in Encore Careers Can Help Solve It."
"If the baby boom generation retires from the labor force at the same rate and age as current older workers, the baby bust generation that follows will likely be too small to fill many of the projected new jobs," the report said.
Gary Kaplan, president of Gary Kaplan & Associates, a Pasadena-based executive search firm, agrees with Bluestone's findings. In fact, he preached the same message years ago in a Wall Street Journal piece that ran in 2002.
"With seniors living longer, healthier lives, those with skills or willing to upgrade or acquire them will be hotly pursued, especially opportune as they realize they can't afford or don't want to retire, he wrote. "Savvy workers and employers are already preparing for the coming talent crunch as the effect of a diminishing labor pool ripples through the economy."
Still, Kaplan said the current economic downturn has been particularly brutal on older workers, many of whom are highly skilled - and highly frustrated.
"An inordinate number of people have been driven out of jobs, and many are 50-plus," he said Friday. "And in my meetings with these people, a significant number of them are not even attempting to find work. They feel as if the deck is stacked against them. They feel their age is being held against them."
But things are primed to turn around, he said.
"I think there will be a wide variety of initiatives launched to attract people who have retired, to get them back into the work force on a temporary or contractual basis," he said.
If not, a significant base of knowledge will be lost, according to Kaplan.
"Numerically, there aren't enough people in the pipeline to replace the baby boomers who will be gone," he said.
Bluestone's analysis builds on the 2008 MetLife Foundation/Civic Ventures Encore Career Survey conducted by Peter D. Hart and Associates.
That study reveals that most people expect to work longer than previous generations, but that half of those aged 44 to 70 want encore careers that combine personal meaning, continued income and social impact.
"Not only will there be jobs for these experienced workers to fill," Bluestone writes, "but the nation will absolutely need older workers to step up and take them."
