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Who'll Sit at the Boomers' Desks?
By FRED BROCK

DURING the Clinton boom years of the late 1990's, in one of the tightest labor markets in memory, corporate America was warned that if it did not cultivate older workers, they would take their skills and move on.

One recession and one so-called jobless recovery later, some questions naturally arise: Was that warning ill founded? Was the tight job market at the end of the 90's an anomaly? Will chronically high unemployment be the norm for the near future?

The answers appear to be no, no and no.

In fact, the current level of unemployment, which has economists and politicians in a lather, is likely to be the real anomaly. Conditions in the late 90's may have been a reflection of job markets to come. And they are coming very quickly.

The reason, of course, is that the big baby-boom generation is starting to retire. Its oldest members are about 57 and will be 65 in 2011. There simply aren't enough workers behind them in the labor supply pipeline to fill their jobs. Employers will have to try to retain older workers in some capacity or lure retired workers back into the work force. Companies that have treated their workers badly or engaged in even the subtlest forms of age discrimination will regret it.