The baby boomers comprise a large and aging population. As baby boomers and their parents age, more and more people are requiring caregiving in varying levels of intensity. In fact, more than 44 million Americans provide some sort of care for a family member or friend 18 years or older. The National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP conducted the study, called Caregiving in the United States, to find the costs to employers of caregiving employees.

"This study estimates the productivity losses to U.S. business of employees who must make workplace accommodations as a result of caregiving responsibilities. These include costs associated with replacing employees, absenteeism, crisis in care, workday interruptions, supervisory time, unpaid leave, and reducing hours from full-time to part time," according to the study.

Some of the key findings of the study are listed below:

The total estimated cost to employers for full-time employees with intense caregiving responsibilities is $17.1 billion.

The average cost per employee for those with intense caregiving responsibilities is $2,441.

The total estimated cost to employers for all full-time, employed caregivers is $33.6 billion.

The average cost per employee for all full-time, employed caregivers is $2,110.

The majority of family caregivers (79%) are providing care to someone over the age of 50.

Nearly 60% of those caring for an adult over the age of 50 are working; the majority of those work full-time.

Nearly 40% of caregivers are men.

The average age of the caregiver for a person over the age of 50 is 47.

Most caregivers provide unpaid care to a parent or grandparent.

Approximately 15% of the caregivers were providing care to someone who lived at a distance of more than an hour away.

At least 6 out of 10 employed caregivers reported that they had made some work-related adjustments as a result of their caregiving responsibilities.

10% of the employed caregivers reduced their hours from full-time to part-time.

Labels: Baby Boomers, Business, Senior Citizens, Workforce

By dint of their sheer number alone, baby boomers are an influential group. So when a group of about 78 million people decides to blaze a new trail, the rest of us have no choice but to follow their lead.

In this case, the baby boomers have begun to reshape the American workforce.

"A succession of surveys over the past decade makes plain the plans of a new generation of older Americans to keep working. Most of this research reveals that four of five boomers are expecting to continue working at the point when earlier generations moved to the sidelines," according to the MetLife Foundation/Civic Ventures New Face of Work Survey. "Indeed, there is already evidence of shifting labor patterns on the part of the pre-boomers, as early retirement levels off and millions of older workers remain in the workforce. These polls also find that most people who keep working want more than an endless incarnation of midlife work. Instead, they are keen on renegotiating their relationship to work, looking for more flexibility and liberation from the long hours characterizing midlife labor in America today."

53 percent of adults aged 50 to 70 expect to work even into their retirement, according to the survey.

The survey focused on what baby boomers want to accomplish through their work once they have passed the traditional retirement age, and whether those desires meshed with what America will need to have people doing. Thankfully, rather than finding a huge disconnect between what baby boomers will want to be accomplishing and what will need to be accomplished, the survey found "heartening indications of what might well be a win-win opportunity of staggering proportions."

According to the survey, 50 percent of Americans aged 50 to 70 are interested in working--now or in the future--in positions that would help improve the quality of life in their communities. More specifically, of leading edge baby boomers, 58 percent are interested in such positions.

"There is overwhelming interest in finding specific types of work in retirement that would
serve the community and people in need," according to the survey. Of baby boomers who plan to work during retirement, 78 percent are interested in working to help the poor, the elderly
and others in need. 56 percent are interested in working with health issues, such as in a hospital or for an organization working to fight a particular disease. And 55 percent are interested in teaching or other educational positions.

Those surveyed gave a variety of reasons for why they will want to continue working past the traditional retirement age. The most common reasons included staying connected with other people; receiving a sense of purpose from working; earning additional income; and the ability to help improve the quality of life in their community.

Labels: Baby Boomers, Workforce

An aging workforce is not a problem that the U.S. is alone in facing. Neither is a problem in attracting the best and the brightest. The European Union, too, is struggling with both of these situations.

"Over the last eight years, more than 10 million foreigners have immigrated to the European Union, plugging the gaps at the cheaper end of the labor market that an aging native population can no longer fill," according to a recent MSNBC article.

"By midcentury a third of all Europeans will be retired, and demographers predict the EU will need another 20 million workers to fill that gap by 2030. But in the contest to attract the best brains, Europe is falling far behind."

According to the article, just 1.7 percent of the working population of 290 is made up of "highly qualified" foreign workers. The U.S. has twice as many such workers, and Australia has 8 percent more.

The EU has recognized the impending crisis and is scrambling to find a solution.

"In an effort to attract big brains from abroad, the European Commission wants to create an express line for the EU labor market." The plan would make available a renewable permit, called a blue card and inspired by the U.S. green card, which "would allow highly skilled workers and their families to move easily between member states and jobs."

The blue card is almost necessary, because each of the EU's member states has a different set of immigration rules. And, with many EU member states facing high unemployment rates and/or social unrest caused in part by immigration, many balked at the idea of encouraging the immigration of additional foreign workers.

"Cardholders and their families will still be able to move from country to country without returning home first, but EU member states will be able to impose their own quotas on migration, and cardholders will need to prove they have a job awaiting them before settling in another state."

There is obviously much fine-tuning to be done, and hopefully as the details of the blue card program are addressed, so too will be the underlying resentment toward immigrants common in many locations across the EU. For more information on immigration in the EU, see my previous post: Ireland Shaped By Growing Immigrant Population.

Labels: European Union, Immigration, Workforce

Americans love instant gratification. That's why so many are in credit card debt (more on that in a future post) and that's why so many save so little (see our previous article on Americans' Negative Savings Rate).

This preference for devoting resources to the present rather than the future apparently starts young.

According to a study released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in December 2007, 36.8 percent of workers who are 17 years old now will have absolutely no money in a 401(k) or similar retirement plan when the time comes for them to retire.

According to a CNN article on the study, "Only 36 percent of workers in 2004 participated in 401(k)s and similar accounts when offered."

With Social Security up in the air and pensions becoming increasingly rare, workers are basically left to plan their retirement on their own by contributing to a 401(k), IRA or both. There are even self-directed IRAs and self-directed 401(k)s for those who want to really take the reins of planning for their retirement.

Unfortunately, it seems that many workers are paralyzed by the idea of planning for their retirement. So, rather than face the stress of the decision-making process, so they do nothing about it. And hope for the best, I guess.

"GAO found that automatically enrolling workers in 401(k)s and similar plans would cut the number of those without money in those plans to 17.7 percent," according to CNN. "Automatic enrollment would halve the number of low income workers with zero retirement dollars from 63 percent to 30 percent."

The GAO is not the only one reporting on the trend. The Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) released a report last November that found that participation in employment-based retirement plans decreased from 40.9 percent of all workers in 2005 to 39.7 percent of all workers in 2006.

"The EBRI report found certain characteristics were associated with a lower level of participation in a retirement plan, such as being non-white, younger, female, never married, having a lower educational attainment, lower earnings, poorer health status, no health insurance through an employer, not working full time, not working full year, and working in service occupations or in farming, fisheries and forestry occupations," according to The Wenatchee World.

The bottom line, though, is that everyone needs to plan ahead and save for retirement. Not only do they need to save, they need to invest in such a way as to outpace inflation. Otherwise, they won't have any money when they want to retire. Hoping to win the lottery at age 64, for example, is just bad "strategery."

Labels: Personal Finance, Retirement Planning, Workforce, Young Workers

"With the baby-boomer generation approaching retirement, resulting in a shortage of approximately 10 million employees over the next decade, candidates with relevant work experience are becoming more in demand," according to ClassesUSA, an online higher education portal.

Many workers of a certain age fear being forced out of their jobs and forced into retirement so that their company can then hire younger replacements. Younger workers are cheaper, in theory, than their older counterparts. They generally cannot command wages as high as those with more experience and education than they have themselves.

Companies can also save by employing younger workers because they will have to shell out fewer dollars for health care, because younger workers are often healthier. Assuming a company participates in a matching program for retirement plans, they will also save money on that front, because the rate of young workers participating in retirement plans is smaller than the rate of older workers doing so.

"With the baby-boomer generation approaching retirement, resulting in a shortage of approximately 10 million employees over the next decade, candidates with relevant work experience are becoming more in demand. That gives older employees more leverage to request bigger paychecks and to change jobs later in life," according to ClassesUSA. "Fields such as health care, business-to-business services, education and services for the elderly are practically custom made for the older worker considering a job change."

The health care industry is ideal because many of the required academic programs can be completed in two years or less, and many health care jobs offer flexible schedules; consulting is a common opportunity in business-to-business settings, and consulting clearly favors those with experience in an industry; education is facing shortages and high turnover across the board and would benefit from older workers, who often bring a sense of loyalty to their workplace; and finally, older workers are especially cut out for the industry of services for the elderly because they are the ones most likely to understand what that population wants and needs.

For more details on why each of these industries are particularly well suited to workers 40 years old and older, see the entire article here.

Labels: Baby Boomers, Job Market, Retirees, Workforce

According to a recent article in the New York Times, "If present trends continue, within two decades the proportion of immigrants in the United States will surpass the peak reached more than a century ago, a new analysis concludes."

The article cites estimates from the Pew Research Center that say that sometime between 2020 and 2025, immigrants will account for 15 percent of the American population, which works out to one in seven people.

The article also cites the Pew Research Center also estimates as evidence that this increase could affect the size and makeup of the American workforce. "Because the vast wave of baby boomers will be joining the ranks of the elderly, the number of young and elderly compared to the number of working people—the so-called dependency ratio—would rise to 72 per 100 in 2050, compared with 59 per 100 in 2005."

What does this mean for investors? For one thing, it means that the job market is likely to change. Both the types of jobs in demand and the types of workers available might shift as the population of immigrants increases. It also means that real estate prices could increase in areas traditionally heavily populated by immigrants, because the balance between supply and demand could be disrupted.

Labels: Immigration, Job Market, Real Estate, Workforce