The New Generation Gap

In fact, Back, Gavin, and Beard predict the labor climate will become increasingly unsettled over the next five to 10 years, when the members of the nation’s baby boomer generation are expected to start retiring en masse. The first of the country’s 80 million baby boomers—roughly 2.9 million of them—turned 60 in 2006, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 20 years, baby boomers, who currently comprise nearly 27 percent of the country’s population, will have reached the traditional retirement age. Trouble is, the generation slated to succeed boomers in the workforce—the so-called Generation Y—is outnumbered by their parents’ generation by some 30 million people.

Optimists speculate that baby boomers, who are living longer and working longer than previous generations, aren’t interested in retiring the traditional way—at age 65, to porch swings, Scottsdale condos, and cruise-ship casinos. What’s more, as the cost of retirement soars, many boomers likely will be bound to the workplace for years to come.

Even so, Gavin says, the raw population totals dictate that retirees will far outnumber the recruits. “We’re planning on the shortage intensifying,” he says. “Our five-year plan calls for it to continue to tighten, to some degree, despite the economy. Just based on the pure fact that we don’t have the demographic spread to cover the people retiring. It just doesn’t make sense, numbers-wise.”

Going to a Better Place

Yet it’s not just the massive baby boomer migration that today’s employers should be concerned about, Beard explains. “There is a substantial gap in the thought process of how baby boomers and Gen Y people think,” he says, “and it’s going to create some unique issues in the marketplace five to 10 years from now.

“There’s a very strong impression in the marketplace that the Generation Y workforce lacks work ethic,” Beard continues. “They’re young people that, in many cases, didn’t have to work while going through high school or college. The concept of long hours and hard work isn’t seen as frequently [in Generation Y] as it with baby boomers.”

In other words, baby boomers live to work; their children work to live. “I think Generation X and Y are bringing different expectations to their work life than the boomers did,” Gavin says. “The boomers faced much more competition for jobs than Generation Y. But the younger people also are bringing the expectation that work is not the only thing in life.”

And for better or for worse, companies are going to have to accommodate the workforce’s changing expectations. Sweetening salaries and signing bonuses is a start, but more and more of today’s candidates are seeking out work environments that are comfortable and don’t consume their lives.