The Wall Street Journal had a great report by Lisa Bannon on what an age 60+ workforce might look like over the next decade. We’ve been pondering this ourselves and what that means for businesses across America and the world.
Workers 65 and over will account for more than 60% of projected labor-force growth from 2020-30…During the pandemic, a disportionately high number of older workers have retired early, aggravating a labor shortage.
Wall Street Journal
The article essentially describes however what we’ve been writing about some time now. People that reach an age past 60 and sometimes even 50 don’t want to work at the same type of career, hours, and location as they have done the past 20 or 30 years. Many of these people have career “burn out” and would much prefer to do mentoring, flexible and meaningful work.
Boomers accelerating retirement because of covid is what has exacerbated the labor shortage but that trend was in existence long before covid arrived. The chart below shows job openings from BLS JOLTS report growing since 2011. If covid abates mid 2022 we expect the open jobs number to come down but in Boomer Math, we still expect between 8 and 12 million job openings depending on how boomers feel about returning to work or not.
To answer our question, What if Boomers don’t quit? We can envision a new work environment emerging consisting of shorter work weeks, shorter work days, and much more remote work. What does this mean for a prudent investor?
It likely means small businesses such as dry cleaners, cafe’s, restaurants, etc that aren’t optimized near high traffic areas will struggle. It also means that large chains of dry cleaners, cafe’s, and restaurants may thrive. It also means there may be less driving on the roads, less shopping for business attire and different socializing behaviors over time.
We will continue to research, assess, and make prudent investment decisions.
As always, stay tuned and stay solvent.