This is the final installment of a three-part series by public affairs consultant Michael Luis covering workforce issues in Washington. He can be reached at luisassociates@comcast.net.
The next time you see a crew working on a utility pole, take a look under the hardhats: it’s a sea of grey beards. A large chunk of the line workers that keep the power wires strung are part of a wave of upcoming retirements that will result not just in skill shortages, but also in loss of knowledge that comes only with experience.
Yes, the Baby Boomers have begun their long-anticipated exit from the labor force, and as they stroll off to Strawberry Fields Forever the impact will fall particularly heavily on the upper end of traditional blue-collar occupations. Panic is setting in at utilities, sawmills, and Boeing plants as a large segment of the skilled workforce becomes eligible for those generous retirement benefits negotiated back in the good old days.
The Boomer retirement crisis has its roots in three basic trends.
The first is simply the numbers. Demographics is destiny, as they say, and the numbers have been unfolding since 1946. The Baby Boom peaked in 1960, when 65,328 babies were born to Washington mothers. Births stayed in the 60,000 range for a few more years, and then plummeted by the early 1970s to well below 50,000. The “Birth Dearth” continued through the 1970s, with the birth rate finally recovering in the 1980s as the Boomers themselves got into the baby business. After a 10-year period known as the “Baby Boom Echo,” births again plummeted as the smaller Birth Dearth cohort entered its childbearing years in the 1990s.
America’s seesawing birth rate
Now, move this seesawing birth rate forward 20 years and you get a seesawing workforce. Part of the reason that there are not enough Gen X’ers to fill in for the retiring Boomers is simply that too few of them were born. Even though migration to the state tends to bring in a lot of younger people, there are fewer Washingtonians between the ages of 35 and 40 than there are between 50 and 55.
The second trend is the pattern of migration to the state. Washington employers depend heavily on other states to fill out their workforce. But people who move to Washington are much more likely to have college degrees and be working in offices than they are to have union cards and be working on the factory floor. The Seattle Police Department received national attention for recruiting officers in New York City, a practice that is routine in technology and business service industries.
Another inhibitor to national recruitment for skilled trades is the high cost of living. Utilities across the country face the same impending skill shortage, so a line worker looking to relocate can find work at similar wages in lower-cost communities that easily compete with Washington for quality of life.
The graying of our factory floors
The third factor in the graying of the factory floor is the shrinking of the older segment of the workforce over time and the squeezing out of younger workers. In 1981, Washington had more than 45,000 people working in forest products mills. By 2006, that number had dropped to less than 30,000. Aerospace employment peaked at 106,000 in 1990, dropped to 53,000 in 2004, and will likely never see 70,000 again. The same story is repeated in manufacturing industries across the state as industry shifts and huge productivity gains wipe out factory jobs.
When manufacturers lay off workers, they start with those holding the lowest seniority, keeping the more experienced workers on board. So, although younger people may enter these occupations, they may not want to stick around as long. The workers hired in the 1970s and 1980s have the seniority and security and, not surprisingly, are still there.
Now, for numbers alone, the demographic pendulum should take care of the problem. The Baby Boom Echo of the 1980s produced the biggest demographic wave in the nation’s history. For every 10 members of Washington’s workforce between 55 and 60, there are 13 between 25 and 30. But sociologists are wringing their hands about another problem: What if they just … don’t want to do that kind of work?
For a generation raised on Seinfeld and Friends, where beautiful young people hold really cool jobs but don’t seem to actually spend any time at them, the thought of an eight-hour shift, five days a week could be shocking. In addition, the recent presidential campaign hasn’t done much for the image of blue-collar life, with relentless coverage of “bitter” mill workers in depressed towns across Pennsylvania and Ohio. Ross and Rachel don’t go to the Legion hall for a beer-and-a-bump.
High expectations
In his influential book The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida noted that newer-generation workers have high expectations for independence and creativity in their work, preferring hairdressing or landscaping over machining or welding. That’s all well and good, but no one really wants creative and lightly supervised aircraft assembly.
A further complication in filling the Baby Boomer gap comes from workplace culture. Once the new Millennium generation gets lured into the workplace, their supervisors can expect the inevitable clash of cultures. The guy who looks like a late-stage Jerry Garcia comes from a different world than the guy with the tongue stud. The discontinuity in the age range of the workplace — the “bathtub” in the curve — removes the softening impact of the middle-aged worker with a foot in both camps.
Job security important
Cyclical industries with a history of layoffs and growth spurts — think aerospace, wood products, and truck manufacturing — may find the incoming generation far more sensitive about security. They watched their parents and grandparents get buffeted by the tectonic industrial shifts of the 1980s and will not fully entrust their well being to their employer. Boomers’ loyalty was rewarded with lifetime employment, an expectation that the new Millennials will not have.
Filling in for Boomers retiring from skilled trades in the state is not a numbers game: the bodies are there. But not enough are ready to step into today’s technology-heavy trades. In 2006, there were nearly 200,000 Washingtonians between the ages of 18 and 24 who had graduated from high school but had not set foot on a college campus. Without further training their economic prospects are bleak, but with education or apprenticeships they can take over high-paying jobs from Boomers on their way out. But these young people will only step up if they feel welcome, which means that the Boomers need to do something very unaccustomed: smile and step aside.
