Workforce Entry

An aging workforce is not only an issue for employers, and older employees, but it is an issue that must be faced by younger workers and K-12 teachers.   Sixteen to eighteen year old high school students typically face the decision to go to work.  This decision may be based on fiscal needs or desire, yet in the coming millennium, students will face a workplace that is substantially different from the workplace of their parents and teachers.

The median age of U.S. workers will be 45 by 2005.  More than 15% of the workforce will be over 55 years old.  These figures are staggering when one considers the fact that the proportion of those under 18, as new workforce entrants, is expected to stay constant at around 24% between the years 2000 and 2025 (Couper & Pratt, 1997).  Projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics identify the three groups that will contribute the majority of the new entrants into the workforce by the year 2000:
1) women, 2) minorities, and 3) older adults (Doucette & Venture-Merkel, 1991, p.19).   This describes the demographic changes, workplace motivation, and training issues of an aging American workforce.

Demographics of an Aging America

"The aging of the population will be one of the world's most important social issues of the next half-century.  The United Nations anticipates that by the year 2025 there will be 822 million people in the world age 65 and over, a number that exceeds the present combined populations of Europe and North America" (Parsons, 1994).  In 1990, the United States had 31 million people age 65+.   This was the second largest population in the world next to China's 63.4 million people over 65 years old.  By the year 2025, approximately 57 countries in the world will have over 2 million older persons.  The U.S. is projected to have 59.7 million people age 65+ in the year 2025 (Pryor, Cohen, Berry, Azvedo, & Deets, 1991).   "The coming growth of the elderly population is inevitable, and will occur worldwide.  In developing nations, especially, we can expect to see less of the traditional focus on youth" (Hobbs & Damon, 1996).

Tomorrow's Workplace

The older worker will play a dominant role in tomorrow's workforce.  As the supply of younger workers becomes depleted, this older, larger workforce will become the majority.  What types of skills will the worker of the future need?  Workers in this new environment will not be assigned to permanent, lifelong jobs.  Instead, they will float from position to position, wherever their unique skills and capabilities are required (Boyett & Boyett, 1995).

Supplying workers who are capable of meeting needs in this new structure will require continual upgrading of worker skills.  Companies that succeed in the future will need to function as learning organizations, where learning is viewed as a key business process and a priority (Braham, 1995).  Lifelong learning will be a key business process and a priority (Braham, 1995).  Lifelong learning will be centered around key areas:

• Basic skills: Reading, writing, arithmetic/mathematics, listening, speaking;

• Thinking skills: Creative thinking, decision making, problem solving, seeing things in the mind's eye, knowing how to learn, reasoning; and

• Personal qualities: Responsibility, self-esteem, sociability, self-management, integrity/honesty.

There are also five competencies needed:

• Resources: Allocates time, money, material, and facility resources; allocates human resources;

• Information: Acquires and evaluates information, organizes and maintains information, interprets and communicates information, uses computers to process information;

• Interpersonal: Participates as a member of a team, teaches others, serves clients/customers, exercises leadership, negotiates, works with cultural diversity;

• Systems: Understands systems, monitors and corrects performance, improves and designs systems;

• Technology: Selects technology, applies technology to task, maintains and troubleshoots technology. (Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills, 1994; Boyett & Boyett, 1995)

Lifelong learning will be vital for success in the workforce of the future, and thus, for the older worker.  Lifelong learning is a term that has been used for many years in the workplace, yet in the next 20 to 30 years the need for lifelong learning will become more prevalent and critical (Bond & Coleman, 1990).

Retraining Mature Adults

As more baby boomers cross the 45-year line, some will join a silent but growing minority: underemployed or unemployed older workers seeking affordable training and decent jobs.  With their number increasing, older boomers can become a potent force for better and less costly training and job-finding services designed to meet their needs and develop their potential (Brudney, 1998).

Managers describe the older workers as having had more experience, better judgement, a stronger commitment to quality, more reliable attendance and punctuality, and lower turnover.  In addition, Humple and Lyons further identify factors that are "particularly characteristic" of older workers:

• Stronger sense of loyalty and commitment;

• More emphasis on quality of work life than on work itself;

• Economic motives that may decrease at least to the point where earnings from work are seen as part of daily life rather than its focal point;

• More emphasis on social and personal concerns such as being friends or feeling appreciated or recognized;

• Greater pride in craftsmanship or in quality of work;

• A greater attempt to work harder to make up for self-perceived failures or inadequacies; and

• A deeper sense of worth ethic of giving one's employer a good day's work and believing that work is intrinsically valuable (Hale, 1990, p. 9).

The characteristics of an older worker are difficult to summarize and classify.  People generally become more heterogeneous, rather than homogeneous, as they age, thus making classifications of older individuals more difficult than they might be with younger individuals.  many of these characteristics may be observed in people of any age.

Successful Corporate Examples

Many companies are now providing successful older worker training programs.  General Electric, AT&T, McDonald's, General Motors, B & Q, Travelers Insurance Company, and Days Inns are just a few of these companies (Hale, 1990; McNaught, 1994).  By using retirees to provide assistance for the company hotline, instead of temporary agency employees, Travelers Insurance Company saved over one million dollars in the first year of their new program's operation (McNaught, 1994).  B & Q, a chain of English do-it-yourself stores, opened a new store staffed only with older workers.  This store experienced better work force stability (i.e., six times less employee turnover and 40% less absenteeism compared to comparable stores), improved customer relations, and an increase in profits (McNaught, 1994).  Paul and Townsend state that Combustion Engineering is bringing back many workers who went into early retirement (Allen & Hart, 1998).

Each of these corporations has utilized the unique abilities and experience of an older workforce.  Educators in the school district and in other organizational settings can utilize these successful examples to further investigate and create learning models that are adaptable for both younger and older learners.

This Age Share document is excerpted from four refereed article sources.   Please utilize this Age Share document as an invitation to further explore the topic of training older learners through the following excerpted article sources:

• Ennis-Cole, D., & Allen, J. (1998).  Challenges of training and retraining older individuals with special needs.  The Journal for Vocational Special Need Education, 20(3), 35-42.
• Allen, J., & Hart, M. (1998).  Training older workers: Implications for HRD/HPT professionals.  Performance Improvement Quarterly, 11(4), 91-102.
• Wircenski, M., West, L., Walker, M., & Allen J. [in-press].  Age: A diversity issue in grades K-12 and in higher education.  Educational Gerontology.
• Wircenski, M., & West, L. (1998).  Ageism: Implications for Vocational Special Needs Education.  The Journal for Vocational Special Need Education, 20(3), 4-8.