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Leading Economist Forecasts More Jobs Than Workers in Coming Years
 
Projects Significant Labor Shortages by 2018;
Workers Over 55 Will Be Key to Closing the Gap
Washington, DC - March 22, 2010 - As surprising as it sounds in the current employment market, a renowned labor economist projects that there will be more jobs than people to fill them in the United States by 2018.
Assuming a return to healthy economic growth and no change in immigration or labor force participation rates, Barry Bluestone, Dean of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University, predicts that within the next eight years there could be at least 5 million potential job vacancies in the United States, nearly half of them (2.4 million) in social sector jobs in education, health care, government and nonprofit organizations. The loss in total output could limit the growth of needed services and cost the economy as much as $3 trillion over the five-year period beginning in 2018."If the baby boom generation retires from the labor force at the same rate and age as current older workers, the baby bust generation that follows will likely be too small to fill many of the projected new jobs," states Bluestone's report, After the Recovery: Help Needed - The Coming Labor Shortage and How People in Encore Careers Can Help Solve It.
Needed - The Coming Labor Shortage and How People in Encore Careers Can Help Solve It.
 
Bluestone's research is one of four papers written by independent experts and released today by MetLife Foundation and Civic Ventures, a think tank on boomers, work and social purpose. 
 
All four papers, which can be found at www.encore.org/research, assert that engaging workers over 55 in encore careers will be vital to meeting work force shortages and critical social needs. In addition to the Bluestone research, the three companion papers, written by experts in their fields, examine how creative approaches to staffing can help meet pressing problems in education, health care and the green economy, now and in the future.
 
Bluestone's analysis builds on the 2008 MetLife Foundation/Civic Ventures Encore Career Survey conducted by Peter D. Hart and Associates, which shows that most people expect to work longer than previous generations, but that half of those aged 44 to 70 want encore careers that combine personal meaning, continued income and social impact. "Not only will there be jobs for these experienced workers to fill," Bluestone writes, "but the nation will absolutely need older workers to step up and take them."