Businesses to Face Boomer Challenge

America’s “graying” and “browning” population driven by aging baby-boomers and a growing population of immigrants means that companies will have to look farther and try harder to attract qualified workers in the future, a demographer said.

“At the end of the day the question is, ‘Who is going to take care of you when you get old?’” says James H. Johnson Jr., a demographer and professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Johnson says there are 86 million baby-boomers in the country. Every day, 12,000 of them turn 50 and 9,000 turn 60. The oldest will turn 62 this year.

“What’s going to happen in three years?” Johnson asked. “In demographic lingo, it’s called the silver tsunami, and it’s about to hit.”

The age groups coming up behind the baby-boomers are smaller, he noted. What is more, the median age of Americans has increased to above 35.

Recent immigrants, especially those from Latin American countries, tend to be younger and have larger families than baby-boomers. It is a phenomenon he called the “browning” of America, as the non-immigrant population is not having large enough families to replace themselves.  To read the entire article, click here:  Boomers and Business

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