It takes a lot of time and training to qualify as a commercial pilot, a health care worker or an educator — which bodes ill for airlines, medical facilities and schools as thousands of baby boomers retire from professions already facing labor shortages.
With the youngest boomers turning 65 by the end of the decade, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce predicts the workforce participation rate will drop from 62.5% to 60.4% over the next six years. It said highly trained veteran employees are hard to replace.
“When you consider the worker shortage we already have, the number of individuals retiring and the declining birthrate, it paints a bleak picture of the number of people we have to fill skilled positions in the future,” Stephanie Ferguson, director of global employment policy and special initiatives at the chamber, told The Washington Times.
Airlines already have cut flights because of a shortage of 10,000 pilots. Nearly 9 in 10 public school districts have struggled to hire teachers. Almost every medical field has reported similar hiring problems.
The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows about 8.8 million job openings and 6.3 million unemployed people nationwide.
Several analysts interviewed by The Times pointed out that millions of openings would remain if every unemployed person got a job tomorrow. Nearly 11,000 boomers retire daily.
“Their exit from the labor market will have the same impacts that we have been experiencing for the last several years since the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Andrew Crapuchettes, CEO of RedBalloon, an Idaho recruitment agency. “Our workforce isn’t getting any younger, and we’re losing the highly skilled workers from the economy. If our demographics continue on this trajectory, innovation and growth will be stunted in the U.S. economy.”
Born amid postwar prosperity from 1946 through 1964, boomers have been retiring for more than 14 years. They have amassed unprecedented wealth by securing high-paying jobs, having fewer children and working longer than their parents.
The Census Bureau projects that a record 4.4 million people will reach retirement age this year. By 2030, 20.2% of U.S. residents will be 65 and older.
Moreover, the Pew Research Center has reported that 3.2 million boomers retired from the third quarters of 2019 to 2020, well above the average annual increase of 2 million retirements from 2011 to 2019.
That included K-12 teachers weary of virtual learning, airline pilots who hit the mandatory retirement age of 65 and medical workers exhausted by increased workloads.
Employers have since coaxed some of them into “unretiring.” Nick Bunker, an economist at Indeed, reported in May that Labor Department data showed an estimated 1.5 million retirees had reentered the labor market over the previous year.
Economists say that hasn’t stopped the retirements or changed the reality that hardly a single boomer will still be working in 2030.
“The pace of retirement of baby boomers has accelerated in the past few years, in particular since 2019,” said Daniel Lacalle, a professor of global economics at IE Business School in Spain. “This is mostly due to a combination of job losses post-COVID and an improvement in savings.”
Retirements have been especially hard on the medical industry, where COVID-19 infection surges overwhelmed providers during pandemic lockdowns.
The American Association of Medical Colleges estimates the nation will face a shortage of 37,800 to 124,000 doctors by 2034. That includes an expected shortfall of 17,800 to 48,000 primary care physicians, 15,800 to 30,200 surgical specialists and 3,800 to 13,400 medical specialists.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has identified a need to add more than 275,000 nurses by 2030.
“The retirement of the baby boomer generation from the health care industry in the U.S. is expected to create significant workforce shortages, potentially leading to increased costs in health care services and a strain on the remaining workforce,” said Maddie Weirman, a creative lead at Tebra, a California company that helps medical providers automate their services.
Meanwhile, shortages of K-12 teachers, principals and staff have left public schools scrambling to catch up from pandemic-induced learning losses. Officials have tried loosening teaching certification requirements and reactivating retired teachers as long-term substitutes to cope with a dwindling number of young people entering the profession.
According to the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, 86% of public schools had trouble hiring teachers entering the 2023-2024 academic year and 83% struggled to hire non-teaching staff.
In an email to The Times, an Education Department spokesperson noted that the Biden administration has made federal funding available to keep older teachers working as long as possible while the talent pipeline catches up.
“The Department has encouraged states and districts to provide flexibility so that retired teachers can come back to work while still receiving pension payments,” the spokesperson said.
Not all professions have the option of hiring back retired workers.
In the airline industry, a mandatory retirement age of 65 for pilots has added to worker shortages, which analysts expect to last through 2027. Other labor shortages include airplane mechanics and air traffic controllers, who did not receive training during pandemic travel restrictions.
In May, the Government Accountability Office reported that the number of newly certified pilots and mechanics grew from 2017 to 2022 while the number of people training in pilot schools “has grown in recent years.”
The agency added that “there may not be enough of them to meet airlines’ needs in the future” as travel demand grows.
Meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Administration on Monday asked Congress not to raise the mandatory retirement age for airline pilots to a proposed 67 until it could study the safety risks of older pilots flying.
FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker told a House committee hearing on Tuesday that while the agency does not have a position on the retirement age, it “would like to have data to support the change.”
The industry has launched recruiting campaigns to meet that demand. Officials at the Pittsburgh Institute of Aeronautics School for Aviation Maintenance in Hagerstown, Maryland, said their enrollment for airline mechanics is up 10% year-over-year and applications are strong.
Hannah Walden, communications manager for Airlines for America, said major carriers have adjusted staffing and reduced flights “to reflect current operating realities.” She said the airlines the trade association represents had 800,000 workers as of October, “the most in more than 20 years.”
“U.S. airlines recognize the importance of securing a pipeline of new employees — pilots, flight attendants, mechanics and others — and have established new pilot training programs, enhanced recruitment efforts and implemented programs to address financial hurdles related to education and training costs,” Ms. Walden said.
Robert W. Mann, an independent airline analyst and consultant in Port Washington, New York, said limited training resources have slowed the industry from replacing retiring pilots. He noted that first officer and captain shortages have hit regional airports the hardest.
“These limitations and similar shortages of … mechanics are likely to continue for several more years, with the timeline governed by rate of air travel demand expansion,” said Mr. Mann, a former American Airlines executive.
Employers have prioritized hiring older and foreign-born workers, but workforce analysts say the former talent pool is dwindling and the latter cannot provide sufficient numbers because of caps on legal immigration.
HireVue, a Utah-based hiring technology firm, reported last March that 41% of companies had focused on hiring and retaining older employees. Its clients include St. Jude Children’s Hospital, Delta Air Lines and Atlanta Public Schools.
Amanda Hahn, HireVue’s chief marketing officer, said that strategy is a temporary fix.
“We’re at an inflection point where changing demographics are colliding with rapid advancements in technology, and employers need to double down on assessing candidates for their potential rather than just past work experience,” Ms. Hahn told The Times.
“This paradigm shift away from what a person has done in the past to what they can do in the future is one of the ways we’re going to navigate through short-term pain caused by changes such as mass retirement,” she said.
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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