Is Boomer retirement as scary as it seems?
To go with my previous article about Baby Boomer retirement, here's the monkey wrench I'm going to toss at Conventional Wisdom: is the sky really falling? Is a massive Baby Boomer retirement really about to cause a huge gap in workers? According to the US Census Bureau, here are the 2006 percentages of population by age group:
| Birth Years | %age of population |
|---|---|
| 1991-1987 | 7.2% |
| 1986-1982 | 7% |
| 1981-1977 | 6.8% |
| 1976-1972 | 7.1% |
| 1966-1962 | 7.6% |
| 1961-1957 | 7.6% |
| 1956-1952 | 6.8% |
| 1951-1947 | 6% |
| 1946-1942 | 4.5% |
Baby Boomers, from 1946-1964, account for about 28.7% of the population
Generation X, from 1965-1982, are 17.7% of the population
Generation Y, from 1980-1994, hold at least 14.2% of the population, with more yet to count
That does look panic-inducing-ly out of balance on the face of it. But this was the first time I really paid attention to the years. The exact years that define "generations" are constantly being debated, but taking these as approximates, boomers span 18 years, X covers 7 years, Ys 14 years. Boomers cover many more years, so it's almost expected that there's more of them.
Broken into five-year pieces like this chart, the rate of workers reaching retirement age twitches up 1.5% between the 64-year-olds (1946-1942) and the 59-year-olds (1951-1947), and then holds fairly steady. It's an increase, but is it really that much?
I'm not suggesting that many organizations won't see a lot of retirements in the next few years. But I am suggesting that boomers are going to retire gradually, over that same 18-year-span (and more!) that they entered the workforce, and that we have adequate incoming people to cover those retirements. What I'm suggesting is that we clarify the focus of the baby boomer retirement discussion: is the problem less in the number of workers that we have, and more about the change in mindsets and experiences of the workers? I think the departure of the Baby Boomers and the arrival of Generation Y don't require radical changes in our knowledge management and training programs, but it will put more focus on them than there used to be and make us all sharpen up our game.
Much kerfuffle is going on these days about the baby boomer retirement, and how we will fill those positions. The LA Times put this on the front page today with a story about the
I was reading articles today, including one about
But is that really a
Recently, I and
First impressions are quick to form and have a lasting, sometimes permanent, impact. That's why employee orientation is so important: it's not only the most important factor to get your newest paid resource up and running in all the right directions, it has a huge effect on the motivation and engagement of that new arrival.
Overdeliver.
I read today a long, well-researched, well-thought-out post from from Sims Learning Connections about