{"id":116382,"date":"2024-02-10T08:22:10","date_gmt":"2024-02-10T13:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/?p=116382"},"modified":"2024-02-10T08:22:10","modified_gmt":"2024-02-10T13:22:10","slug":"will-immigrants-save-us-economy-as-baby-boomers-retire-in-droves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2024\/02\/10\/will-immigrants-save-us-economy-as-baby-boomers-retire-in-droves\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Immigrants Save US Economy as Baby Boomers Retire in Droves?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"VOA \u2014 All About America explores American culture, politics, trends, history, ideals and places of interest.<\/em><\/p>\n

Each day, about 10,000 people born between 1946 and 1964 leave the U.S. workforce, a trend accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic when older workers decided to retire early rather than risk getting sick.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re running out of workers. Why? Because baby boomers are retiring, and you don’t have enough younger workers who are skilled to fill in their spots,\u201d said Dana Peterson, chief economist at The Conference Board, a research group. \u201cWe were going to have labor shortages anyway. The pandemic just accelerated retirements and made labor shortages that much more intense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peterson spoke at a recent online symposium organized by the Brookings Institution.<\/p>\n

The problem is that for every one person leaving, there’s only one person coming into the labor force, according to Selcuk Eren, a senior economist at The Conference Board. And a stagnant labor force translates into limited growth.<\/p>\n

\u201cEconomic growth is going to be constrained by the number of workers that you have,\u201d Eren says. \u201cSo, one-on-one means that your labor force is not growing, which is going to slow down economic growth, as well.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"For<\/div>\n<\/div>
For 50 years, baby boomers \u2014 the youngest of whom turn 60 this year \u2014 have made up the backbone of the American workforce.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The federal government workforce is expected to be hard-hit as more boomers retire.<\/p>\n

\u201cForty percent of the federal government is aged 55 or more as of now, so that means that this huge wave of retirements is coming,\u201d Eren says. \u201cAnd you’re going to have a difficult time to replace them, because there’s not enough younger people, especially with the educational requirements that those jobs require.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Conference Board\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0examines which industries are likely to have the most severe labor shortages as older Americans leave the workforce.<\/p>\n

These include so-called blue collar, or manual labor jobs like personal care, food services, cleaning, construction, installation, maintenance and occupations involving repairs. Production and transportation jobs will also be impacted by departing baby boomers, but to a lesser extent, according to the report.<\/p>\n

The report finds that the most severe labor shortages will be in health-related jobs as more aging baby boomers will require personal care.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"The<\/div>\n<\/div>
The number of retirements is expected to far exceed the number of new workers entering the job market over the next decade.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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STEM professionals \u2014 science, technology, engineering and mathematics workers \u2014 are at a lower risk of shortages. Occupations that allow for remote work will have less intense labor shortages, according to the report. The potential for labor shortages is generally lower in occupations that require a college degree. But some are still at risk.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou will see similar trends playing out for dentists,\u201d Eren says. \u201cProbably half of them are above 65 years old, and you don’t have enough younger people going into that profession.\u201d<\/p>\n

Immigration could be a way to lessen the impact of boomers leaving their jobs, Eren says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s probably the fastest solution, because it takes time to educate a younger person, to bring them to that skill level,\u201d Eren says. \u201cThe fastest solution is just immigration and giving priority to immigrants with those skills that we are going to be lacking. That’s number one. Number two is essentially, try to delay the retirements by providing incentives to the potential retirees.\u201d<\/p>\n

Incentives that could include tax and social security policies that don\u2019t penalize people who work into their seventies. And offering more flexibility, like increased remote work or a part-time schedule, to people nearing retirement age.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Health-related<\/div>\n<\/div>
Health-related occupations are expected to experience the most severe labor shortages as aging baby boomers require more health services.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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For Chicago-based college professor Kristin Mariani, the departure of boomers translates into increased opportunity for her students.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe impact is, it\u2019s giving younger people, the generations that came after them, to become the change-makers, the decision-makers,\u201d says Mariani, an adjunct assistant professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. \u201cThe key is to make sure that the education and the knowledge that is given to these individuals, that they will be able to move forward with these responsibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Career coach Julia Toothacre expects the dwindling supply of older workers to cause some upheaval as companies struggle to adjust to a new reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the downside could be that companies end up restructuring more,\u201d says Toothacre, a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 and career strategist at ResumeBuilder.com. \u201cBut they’re restructuring now, so that’s just a common part of business, right? Those ebbs and flows are going to continue to happen year to year, but I think it’s going to create a lot of opportunity. And then we’ll see new shifts in the market, and we’ll be having a different discussion in a couple of years.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VOA \u2014 All About America explores American culture, politics, trends, history, ideals and places of interest. Each day, about 10,000 people born between 1946 and 1964 leave the U.S. workforce, a trend accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic when older workers decided to retire early rather than risk getting sick. \u201cWe’re running out of workers. Why? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":116383,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-recposts"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116382"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":116385,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116382\/revisions\/116385"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}