Working Longer vs. Job Descrimination
Several national studies by AARP, MetLife and other organizations corroborate that over 70% of the Boomer generation intends to keep being productive after the traditional time of retirement. Even if half of this percentage actually continues working into their late sixties and early seventies, this will go a long way in addressing deficits.
Another economic and demographic force is the nation’s need for career extension because of an under-trained younger workforce. According to John McMennamin, a former Fortune 500 corporate senior manager and expert on workforce aging, twenty percent of the current workforce is trained for sixty percent of the jobs now demanding highly trained knowledge workers. Yet McMennamin observes that only fifteen percent of corporations are currently taking steps to address an aging workforce. According to Marc Freedman, the nation will soon need about 630,000 senior executives to run the nation’s non-profit organizations. Where is the experience to fill these gaping needs?
Clearly there is a mismatch between a generation’s willingness to continue working and a business community not entirely set on welcoming “wisdom workers” into the human resources fold. Ageist attitudes sometimes run deep in corporations and organizations. Yet, if more citizens work beyond the traditional age of retirement, they continue contributing to entitlement programs longer, thereby reducing future claims.
A recent study by the Urban Institute supports these views.
“If boomers work longer, the economy could produce more goods and services, boosting living standards for workers and generating additional tax revenue to fund promised benefits for retirees and other government programs. Many surveys find that boomers plan to work longer than recent retirees, but their opportunities will be limited if employers are unwilling to hire or retain them.”
Boomers' fairly widespread desire to remain engaged in the workforce do face obstacles:
“Older workers who do lose their jobs, however, experience longer unemployment spells than their younger counterparts. In 2006, 28 percent of unemployed adults ages 55 to 64 were unemployed for at least 27 weeks, compared with just 26 percent of those ages 25 to 34 and 20 percent of those ages 35 to 44 (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2007c).
“They argue that an increase in global labor supply, which U.S. firms can tap through outsourcing or immigration, will more than make up for any slowdown in the domestic labor force (Cappeli 2005; Freeman 2007). The emergence of China, India, and nations from the former Soviet Union in the world economy may have doubled the supply of workers worldwide. If the expected shortage in prime-age workers does not materialize, employers may face fewer incentives to turn to older workers.
“The substantial increase in the share of the workforce over age 55 in the coming years could lead to a glut of older workers despite the overall labor force slowdown (Sapozhnikov and Triest 2007). Too many older workers could result in lower wages and employment rates at older ages.”
Millennials Rising
Although generational accountants hammer home the unprecedented size of the Boomer Generation, at 76 million, they may not be fully factoring the true size and dimensions of the Echo Boom, Boomers’ children. According to various sources, the Millennial Generation has about 80 million members and growing due to immigration. Conversely, the Boomer Generation is shrinking and today consists of less than 70 million, with another Boomer dying about every 48 seconds. It’s entirely possible that those projecting gloomy future scenarios have not fully considered the true weight of these demographic realities.
Sociological Imagination
The Boomer generation has what Bill Thomas, M.D., a geriatrician, author and founder of the Eden Alternative, calls a unique sociological imagination, with engagement, reinvention, charity and self-empowerment as keystone values.
For example, one presage of the future on a more granular level may be today’s growing enthusiasm for “slow medicine,” wherein patients deliberately eschew elaborate medical technologies with high risks and marginal benefits. This generation may more typically choose less evasive care at the end of life, quality over quantity.
A Healthcare Economy?
So what if the primary economic engine of America becomes healthcare focused? The 20th century can be thought of as an automobile economy that created a national highway system, parking garages, suburbs, shopping malls, gasoline companies, car companies, and drive-through Starbuck’s. This economy created millions of jobs in highway construction, real estate development, retailing, oil and gas exploration, and franchising. A healthcare economy can also stimulate millions of jobs for physicians, nurses, biotech engineers, genetic researchers, and home healthcare aides.
Technologies developed to prolong productive life and engineer negligible senescence have extraordinary market value and could be sold as exports to other countries, such as rapidly aging Europe, Japan and China. In other words, the money always comes from somewhere and goes somewhere.
