The Coming Job Boom

Demographics will be shaping the economy in unexpected ways the next twenty years. Business 2.0 had the best article - not available online without a subscription. But Google doesn't let me down. Time has a light look:

Though the average retirement age is creeping up--and a growing share of Americans, by choice or necessity, are planning to work at least part time well past 65--demographers say there still will not be enough qualified members of the next generation to pick up the slack. So with 76 million baby boomers heading toward retirement over the next three decades and only 46 million Gen Xers waiting in the wings, corporate America is facing a potentially mammoth talent crunch. Certainly, labor-saving technology and immigration may help fill the breach. Still, by 2010 there may be a shortage of 4 million to 6 million workers.

Motley Fool Covers the Business 2.0 story here: By 2010, analysts in the article estimate a 5.3 million skilled-employee labor "gap," and the shortfall is estimated to balloon to 21 million by 2020.

el - Of course American business has the answer - outsourcing. My brother at Kinko's says they are now going to eliminate over a thousand position and sent computer graphics to India.

Also remember, if this link lasts: Last time there was a labor shortage as deep as the one that looms today, the peasants revolted.