Weekly new jobless
claims have exceeded 400,000 for more than five months, under
performing even amidst speculation of an economic recovery,
but the ailing labor market didn't stop Business 2.0 magazine
from titling its September cover story, "A Job Boom
is Coming."
The article argues that within two
years a skilled labor shortage will begin as the first baby boomers start
to reach retirement age, and by 2010, the country's labor shortage will
become acute. As a wide swath of the workforce nears retirement, the size
of the college-educated employee pool is on track to actually
stagnate in the next few decades, rather than grow sharply
as it had since the 1950s.
As soon as this decade, the article
posits, the labor shortage of the 1990s will look like "a minor
irritation" compared to the skilled labor shortage that will befall
companies. By 2010, analysts in the article estimate a 5.3 million skilled-employee
labor "gap," and the shortfall is estimated to balloon to
21 million by 2020.
Economists aren't alone
in tolling the warning bell. Companies as diverse as Intel
(Nasdaq: INTC), Sprint
(NYSE: PCS), Whirlpool
(NYSE: WHR), and
others (including the largest job-placement firm in the world), told Business
2.0 they fear "that the supply of labor is about to fall seriously
short of demand." Larry Summers, a former Treasury secretary and the
current Harvard president, regards a skilled labor shortage as "all but
inevitable."
Sprint went on to point out that half
of its 6,000 field and network technicians
are older than 50, while at Cigna (NYSE: CI), about a quarter
of its 3,400 information technology (IT) workers will surpass 55
years of age in the next six years.
Today's 6.2% unemployment rate
is the country's highest in nine years, making warning calls of a
coming labor shortage ring hollow to many. But baby boomers -- the
country's largest generation -- make up nearly 60% of the primary
workforce, and the number of workers coming up behind them is not
nearly big enough to fill the giant gap they'll leave as they retire.
Unless most baby boomers work
longer into retirement years, a labor shortage (especially in skilled
technology and medical fields, Business 2.0 argues), may be much
closer than you think