In our last post, we wrote about the large demographic shifts underway in the U.S. Baby Boomers are queuing up for the exits. That post was about the labor pool’s age groups. In other words, who will be available to work.

This post discusses the shifts in who will be working by age group – in other words, the level of participation in the labor market. In November 2007, The Bureau of Labor Statistics published their Labor Force Projections to 2016. 

Over the ten years between 2006 and 2016,

• There will be an average annual decline of 0.1% in the overall labor force participation rate.
• There will be an average annual decline of 0.6% in the 16-24 year old labor force participation rate. This decline is a continuation of a long-standing trend in lower levels of participation among teens and young adults. In short, analysts believe this group is spending more time in school.
• There will be an average annual increase of 0.1% in the 25-54 year old labor force participation rate. Increases in this group are projected to come from women spending more time in the workforce.
• There will be an average annual increase of 1.2% in the 55+ year old labor force participation rate. This increase is being driven by older people being healthier than in years’ past, longer expected life spans requiring additional savings to fund retirement, increasing costs of medical care, and increases in the Social Security retirement age.

In upcoming posts we will write about the implications of those changes and how organizations are acting in the near term to address the implications.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 27th, 2008 at 3:32 pm and is filed under Demographics.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.