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Memo to Older Employees

Posted on 01 December 2008 by Allgen Financial

James O. Armstrong, President of NowWhatJobs.net, Inc., http://www.nowwhatjobs.net, also serves as the Editor of NowWhatJobs.net. NowWhatJobs.net is the resource for job and career transitions for workers 40 years old and over, Baby Boomers and Active Seniors. Read NowWhatJobs.net for skills training, relocation options, job opportunities and much more. In addition, James is the author of “Now What? Discovering Your New Life and Career After 50″ and the President of James Armstrong & Associates, Inc., a media representation firm based in Suburban Chicago.

Companies are beginning to make adjustments for older workers. This is strictly a supply and demand issue. In the United States, for example, we have approximately 78 million baby boomers, who are now in their early 40s to 62 years old; but, there are dramatically fewer Generation Xers coming up behind us.

So, here is the issue: How do we as a society encourage older men and women to stay in the workforce longer? The way a company needs to operate is to show more flexibility.

In this way, even someone after age 65, who is beginning to receive Social Security benefits, might choose to work two or three days each week, as a supplement to his Social Security benefits and/or his pension or 401(k) income.

Shortage of workers in many categories.
There are many opportunities for my fellow baby boomers in our society. For example, the United States is looking at an 800,000 shortage of registered nurses in the coming years. Together with LPNs, this shortage will exceed a million nurses just in the United States. Of course, as baby boomers begin to retire, they will increasingly require more medical care.

There’s also a shortage of government workers. Plus, our society doesn’t have enough engineers or scientists. In addition, there’s a shortage of truck drivers, warehouse workers and certain types of manufacturing employees. Further, we don’t have enough technology workers in our society either.

Of course, many of these jobs require more education and/or training. Overall, we also need to be flexible in terms of the jobs we’re willing to consider and do. We also need to understand that a retail job pays 30% less than the national average. On the other hand, men and women need to know that manufacturing jobs and especially advanced manufacturing pays 30% more than the national average. So if you consider manufacturing dirty, for example, you need to rework your thinking because these are great jobs that pay well and provide excellent fringe benefits.

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