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Baby Boomer Brain Drain – Does Anyone Care? [Infographic]
Marc Miller
Career Pivot | Author of Repurpose Your Career A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life | Forbes Top 100 Career Website | Podcast Host & Producer of the Award Winning Repurpose Your Career Podcast
Baby Boomer Brain Drain
NextAvenue.org published America’s Coming Brain Drain: Retiring Boomers which contains an infographic from MBA@UNC. This infographic, seen below, chronicles the issues that will be caused by baby boomers leaving the work force—the Baby Boomer Brain Drain.
What I find disturbing is that so few companies are preparing or seem to care at all.
Baby Boomers in the Workforce
Let me spell out some key statistics:
- Baby boomers have 56% of corporate leadership positions
- 10,000 baby boomers are turning 65 every day and will continue to for almost 20 years
- In 2029, all baby boomers will be 65 years old or older
- Baby boomers account for 31% of the workforce
- 4 million companies, which make up 66% of all businesses with employees, are owned by baby boomers
Baby boomers will leave the workforce in the next 20 years, but not in the way we planned.
Read more: The State of Baby Boomers in America
Are Companies Planning for the Baby Boomer Brain Drain?
Heck NO!
- 62% of employers at Fortune 1000 companies believe that future retirements will result in skilled labor shortages in the next 5 years
- 68% of employers have not analyzed the demographics of their workforce
- 77% of employers have not analyzed the retirement rates of current employees
- Only 19-37% of employers have taken action to prevent baby boomer brain drain
Read more: Boomer Labor Power: The Experienced Dividend
Baby Boomers and Retirement
Many of us do not want to retire like our parents. Many of us want to learn new skills and stay current and active. Many of us cannot do this alone.
Returning to college is cost prohibitive. I wrote about this in my post College Degree After 50 – Worth It?
Companies will need us to stay on the job, but are they doing anything about it? The statistics below say NO!
Read more: What matters most to Baby Boomers? [Infographic]
Brought to you by MBA@UNC’s online MBA programs
What do you think? What should companies and/or the government do?
Baby Boomer Brain Drain – Does Anyone Care? [Infographic] was originally posted in May of 2015 on the Career Pivot blog.
Marc Miller is the founder of Career Pivot, which helps Baby Boomers and others design careers they can grow into for the next 30 years. You can follow Marc on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn.
Marc authored the book “Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for Baby Boomers.
Executive Search, Research, Knowledge Management
8yhttp://www.marketwatch.com/story/boomers-wont-budge-us-jobs-market-experiencing-massive-congestion-2015-03-05 "Americans have either decided to remain in the workforce at a time when they might have otherwise retired due to finances or because they like working, “and that has meant greater competition for jobs,” says Mark Hamrick, Washington bureau chief at personal finance site Bankrate.com. Only 26% of Americans have a traditional notion of retirement in which they plan to stop working altogether, according to a new survey of 7,000 households released last week by The Pew Charitable Trusts."
Tech Educator / Elder Advocate / Oral History
8yCompanies *could* adopt a sort of phased retirement model. A lot of these people find work fulfilling and want to continue to keep their hand in. It's tough to be totally cut off from an important social milieu. I think we'll see a lot more people continue as part-time employees. The traditional model of retirement is over-rated (and I think many people are wising up to that), even if retirement is (mostly) inevitable.
Retired at Retired
8yProfessional companies employ a succession planning strategy, be that coaching/mentoring, graduate programmes, apprenticeships, learning portals or academies, educational liaison etc.
Freelancer in print and video editing
8yThe answer to your question – does anyone care? – from my experience is no. So long as companies think that people are easily replaceable cogs in the machine of the business, and that Baby Boomers are either unnecessary or expensive (or both) the phenomenon you are referring to not only will occur but will probably accelerate as time goes by. The writing is on the wall. I'm afraid that it is not encouraging, and articles like this one are going to go unheeded until it is far too late to do anything about it. America is rapidly approaching the point that it will become an also-ran country in terms of business leadership. The really sore point? We'll have done it to ourselves.
Pastor, Multimedia Storyteller, Entrepreneur
8yMarc excellent information for leaders and all who are concerned about the future of the workforce