Boomer-age effect on workforce

BY MARC LALONDE

marc.lalonde@transcontinental.ca



More than half the West Island’s work force will be retired in five to seven years, and companies are going to have to start coming up with ways of replacing their skills, talents and experience, Centre local de développement (CLD) director general Gerry Arsenault said in a meeting with The Chronicle’s editorial board last week.

“About 60 per cent of the West Island’s workforce will be retired or eligible for retirement in five years’ time,�? he said.

The next half-decade will test employers’ ability to balance the personnel losses with new hires, Arsenault said.

“If you look forward five years, the oldest baby boomers, who were born in 1946 and 1947, will be 65 years old. Employers are already seeing it and are fearful of losing the experience in the workplace that will be going with that group. Anybody who has a defined benefit pension, there’s no way in the world those people are going to stay in the workplace,�? he said.

That’s a lot of people.

“Yes, it is. It’s going to be difficult for companies on two levels. One, they’re losing a very high experience level because of the accumulated experience of those employees, and two, as you get out of the baby boom and into the baby bust years (those people born from 1958 to 1968) in terms of demographics, but there aren’t a lot of them left, because a lot of them have moved out of Quebec, especially those who are English,�? he said.

Arsenault said motivation is limited for baby-busters to return to Quebec because of the language situation and the political uncertainty.

“There’s certainly not a lot to bring them back,�? he said.

Commission Scolaire Marguerite-Bourgeoys chairman Diane Lamarche-Venne said nearly 60 per cent of her board’s workforce will be gone in the next half-decade as well.

“Of our 8,000 employees, nearly 60 per cent will be gone by 2010, 2012. We are facing an incredible challenge,�? she said.

She’s not alone.

A Health Canada document called Canada’s Aging Population said the state of seniors’ finances improved so dramatically between 1980 and 2001 showed that only eight per cent of Canadian seniors had annual incomes below the official poverty line, down from 21 per cent — near one-fourth of all Canadian seniors — and it reports that seniors who do fall below the poverty line experience less poverty depth than do other age groups.

All told, it makes retirement look better than working.

In addition to leaving the paid workforce, volunteers who provide many of the services that West Islanders look to in their golden years are also getting older and becoming less and less able to fill that niche, West Island Community Shares director Caroline Tison said.

“These volunteers are now in a position where they need to be looked after, and there’s nobody there to do it,�? she said.