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Baby boomers are entering their final years on the job market and their relationship with their employers is changing. Some companies plan to offer older workers a job in a partial year and shorter hours. (Maddie Meyer / The Washington Post)
The youngest boomers are around 55 years old. The oldest are 70 years old. Most Americans do not remember a workforce without the largest generation.
And yet, as baby boomers enter their final years on the job market, their retirements take businesses by surprise.
Over the next five years, nearly three-quarters of the companies polled in 2018 by Willis Towers Watson, an insurance and risk management brokerage, expect to face significant or moderate attrition challenges. retired late. But as nothing is predictable, a significant proportion of respondents are also concerned about the former.
(Andrew Van Dam / Andrew Van Dam)
Companies are generally more concerned than before about the cost of older workers, and the challenge of replacing the knowledge and skills that these older workers will bring with them on the way home. The reported increase in concern over the fact that older workers "are blocking the promotion of younger employees" was not as keen, although about two-thirds of those surveyed said that It was at least a moderate concern.
The survey included 143 human resources managers in companies that together employ about 2.9 million people. It was analyzed in a working paper distributed in February by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Managers were asked to compare the business challenges posed by employee retirements in the last five years to the next five years. In each category, businesses have faced a greater challenge in the coming years.
Respondents were not part of a random sample and their experiences can not be considered representative. But they suggest a great deal of concern in the business world about treating (or not dealing with) an aging workforce. These data were not available otherwise.
Reason # 1: Baby boomer retirement dates are a moving target.
A record number of Americans intend to work longer. According to a Gallup poll conducted in April 2018, 41% of those surveyed plan to work beyond the age of 65 – a huge leap since the start of Gallup's follow-up in 1995, when it reached 13 , 5% on average.
The age required to qualify for all social security benefits has also increased. Americans born before 1937 became eligible for full social security benefits at age 65. At the time of the birth of the oldest baby boomers, in 1946, the normal retirement age had risen to 66 years.
[U.S. life expectancy declines again, a dismal trend not seen since World War I]
(Andrew Van Dam / Andrew Van Dam)
Workers are not always transparent with their employers about their plans, said Alan Glickstein, executive director of Willis Towers Watson, who helped oversee the survey.
"There are significant gaps, knowledge gaps between what employers think and what employees think," said Glickstein.
They may not know each other. Even if they do, they may be reluctant to discuss their financial situation or be vulnerable to replacement by committing to retirement with their employer.
[[[[More workers leave without notice two weeks]
Although some people only retire forced, Glickstein said, "Most older workers work primarily for financial reasons, not because they are satisfied with their work and want to stay on the labor market up to the age of 70. "
[The new reality of old age in America: A generation finding it too costly to retire.]
In 2017, Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan of the Washington Post reported on the lives of people who had been forced to continue working well beyond the normal retirement age, often up to 70 years of age.
"Fundamental changes in the US pension system have shifted the employer's responsibility to the worker's savings, exacerbating the divide between the country and the rich," Jordan and Sullivan wrote. "Two recent recessions have devastated personal savings. And at a time when 10,000 baby boomers reach the age of 65 every day, Social Security benefits have lost about a third of their purchasing power since 2000. "
[A record number of folks age 85 and older are working. Here’s what they’re doing.]
Reason # 2: No one knows what "retirement" means anymore.
As more and more workers become consultants or accept temporary contracts or concerts, their relationship with employers is changing. Boomer links with their employers may be weaker from the start. In the end, their bonds are more likely to unravel than to separate at one time during a beautiful ceremony involving a gold watch.
"You're sort of wondering what retirement is," Glickstein said. There is no more "magic moment when you stop working entirely," he added.
The share of companies offering older workers a year 's job and shorter hours should increase sharply. About 2 in 5 companies surveyed plan to offer part-time work or flexible hours by 2020, almost double the current rate.
Others hope to keep older workers with reduced responsibilities and a small but growing minority offers options that combine volunteer work and traditional employment.
Reason 3: It is difficult to generalize to all industries.
Four out of five manufacturers and two out of three mining sector employers and non-profit organizations included in the survey were concerned about the loss of talent. Retail and service employers are not as concerned.
This tends to somewhat track the dependence of each sector on older workers, but the individual industries in each sector vary considerably. Funeral homes, religious organizations, bus drivers, florists and real estate agents all employ over one-third of their workers over 55, according to our analysis of the Census Community's American Community Survey.
At the other end, industries that tend to rely on a younger workforce, such as retail, restaurants, electronics stores, theaters, and warehouses. In these areas, less than one in seven workers are about to retire.
In many sectors, employers also face a great deal of uncertainty about who or what will replace a retiring baby boomer, Glickstein said.
Respondents indicated that "loss of company-specific knowledge" would be an increasingly difficult challenge, as would "looking for workers with similar knowledge and skills".
As technology progresses, it is possible for a robot or computer program to assume some of the responsibilities of a worker when the worker is ready to retire. This means that employer succession strategies will evolve alongside technology.
And because baby boomers are the first generation to face the task of passing on their knowledge to computer machines and programs, as well as to apprentices and young employees, setbacks and tensions are inevitable.
"How do you translate this knowledge into an algorithm?" Asked Glickstein.
Scott Clement contributed to this report. The title of the story has been updated.
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