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Are Retiring Baby Boomers Worth Keeping?
And Other Questions Management Should Be Asking

Scott Cranford, Sr. Consultant, North Highland

The historic Baby Boomer generation has begun its transition into retirement – and the reverberations will be felt in virtually every corner of business and the public sector for years to come. The vanguard of this mammoth group born between 1946 and 1964 will begin hitting their 65th birthday in 2011. The loss of this retiring generation will put a number of strains on the existing U.S. workforce, including significant requirements for knowledge and skill transfer, impacts to payroll, and training and planning for new generational behaviors, to name just a few. In addition, there is the challenge of meeting future workforce demands as the boomers leave the employee pool. The U.S. labor force is expected to grow to 162.3 million in 2012 – yet projections are that 165.3 million jobs will be required to support the U.S. economy at that point. More troubling, there is a significant projected gap between the number of jobs requiring a college degree and the number of workers who are expected to have that education (70 million versus 44 million).

There is still time for businesses and governments to plan – but the potential impact could be considerable downstream and the clock is ticking. How many boomers will you be losing and on what schedule? Which ones have knowledge, skills or customer relationships that must be retained? What would be the costs of that retention? How do you systematize knowledge transfer from the ones who are leaving? Assessing these and other issues will help you determine what your organization's plan of action should be.