Will Baby Boomers Retire in Droves, Saving the US Economy for Immigrants?

Around 10,000 Americans who were born between 1946 and 1964 leave the workforce every day; this tendency was accentuated by the COVID-19 epidemic when older workers chose to retire early rather than take the chance of becoming ill. We are losing personnel. Why? due to the fact that there aren’t enough competent younger workers to replace the retiring baby boomers, according to Dana Peterson, chief economist at research organization The Conference Board. “Labor shortages were inevitable nevertheless. The epidemic just hastened retirements and increased the severity of the labor deficit. Peterson recently gave a speech at an online conference that the Brookings Institution hosted.

Senior economist at The Conference Board Selcuk Eren says the issue is that for every individual leaving the labor force, there is only one entering it. And restricted growth is the result of a stagnant work force. The quantity of workers you have will determine how much economic growth you can have, says Eren. One-on-one employment therefore indicates that your work force is not expanding, which will further impede economic progress. According to Eren, “this massive wave of retirements is coming because currently 40% of the federal government is over the age of 55.” And it will be challenging to replace them because there aren’t enough younger individuals, particularly given the educational standards those.

According to a Conference Board analysis, certain industries stand to suffer the most from the exodus of older workers. These include manual labor-intensive activities such as personal care, food service, cleaning, construction, installation, maintenance, and repair jobs. They are often known as “blue collar” vocations. The paper states that baby boomer retirement will also have an impact on jobs in production and transportation, albeit to a lesser degree. According to the survey, the greatest labor shortages would occur in health-related fields as an increasing number of aging baby boomers need personal care.