The baby boomers are back
Thursday, 6 December 2007
Last Updated: Thursday, 6 December 2007
By Mike Preston
The pool of available workers is drying up – and employers are finding that there are very real benefits in adapting recruitment practices to appeal to the ranks of the over-50s baby boomer workforce.
Baby boomers are taking back control of the executive suite, thanks in part to the worsening skills shortage.
A recent survey by The Executive Connection of 220 members found that 40% of management teams are weighted to baby boomers, up from 27% last year. Although Gen-Xers still have the strongest hold, dominating 54% of management teams, this is down from 69% last year.
The battle to find and keep staff is not going to end anytime soon. Demographic change means the skills shortage is going to get much, much worse.
Around 170,000 new workers currently join the Australian workforce each year, but modelling shows that by 2020 that number is likely to shrink to just 12,500 a year.
In other words, there will be fewer new workers each year by 2020 than there were jobs created last month.
The average age of the workforce will increase dramatically as the population ages, with the proportion of the population aged over 65 set to rise from its current 12% to 25%, or more than six million people, by 2050.
This stark equation is a wake-up call that Australian businesses are only now starting to hear.
Increasingly, business owners are coming to understand that the preference for recruiting young staff, a convention formed in the days when a new employee was likely to stay with the company for life, is unsustainable.
For those who are adapting their employment practices to where the workers are – in the ranks of the over 50s – the benefits are already becoming clear.
Studies show that not only are older workers five times less likely to change jobs than their Gen-Y colleagues, they also have significantly lower rates of absenteeism from work.
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