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Boomers Gain Workforce Share; Millennial Employment Lags
CHICAGO -- The recovery of jobs lost during the Great Recession has put two large sections of the labor force in the spotlight: workers at the end of their careers and young adults just starting out, says the CEO of CareerBuilder, Matt Ferguson.
It is a pattern visible in the Youngstown-Warren-Boardman area too.
Baby boomers today hold a larger percentage of jobs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics and other occupations than before the recession while millennials have generally struggled to make catch up after four years of recovery, Ferguson writes in his new book, The Talent Equation.
The number of jobs baby boomers (age 55 to 64) hold grew 9% from 2007 to 2013, a gain of 1.9 million. The millennial workforce (ages 22 to 34), however, has not recovered from the recession nearly as fast. With an increase of only 110,000 jobs, employment in 2013 was essentially unchanged from 2007 (0.3% growth).
In this region, 3,481 jobs were lost during the Great Recession, a drop of 5.9%. It ranks 117th among the regions studied with 55,819 jobs and 174th in percent of millennials in the workforce of 23.1%.
Baby boomers rank relatively high in architecture and engineering, business and financial operations, management and legal services here while millennials rank high in health-care support, food preparation and serving and computer and mathematical positions.
"The recession prompted boomers and millennials to approach the labor market differently," Ferguson writes. "Confronted by weaker entry level job prospects, young professionals left the workforce in greater numbers or took lower paying jobs that didn't take immediate advantage of their degrees. Older workers, on the other hand, often had to postpone retirement to recoup lost savings. Never in history have workers over the age of 55 had the concentration in the workforce they have today; however, employers will have to plan for vacancies when this group inevitably retires, which could quickly create new skills gaps in trade vocations and STEM fields."
Both demographic and behavioral factors provide explanations for boomers' and millennials' diverging paths. The older population may be the more significant. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the population of 55 and older Americans has grown 20% since 2007 -- four times as fast as prime-working age millennials, those 25 to 34.
Moreover, the 55 and older group is the only age group to increase its labor force participation rate (+1.7%) and employment-to-population ratio (+0.8%) since 2007. By comparison, Americans 25 to 34 saw a 2.1% and 4.3% drop respectively in their labor force participation and employment-to-population ratios.
Outside of food preparation and serving jobs, boomers have increased their share of jobs in each category, including STEM-related occupations, relative to millennials. Construction, architecture and engineering were particularly difficult fields to enter for young workers, with 19% and 10% drops in employment, respectively.
A few trends stand out in the occupation-specific data:
- More young workers are taking jobs in restaurant. Food prep and serving had the largest rate of growth for millennials, 18%, and the largest increase in the share of young workers; 35% of food prep workers were millennials in 2013, up from 32% in 2007. Meanwhile, food prep and serving jobs shot up 20% among baby boomers, but those 55 to 64 account for only 7% of the occupation group.
- Health care is a major growth area for baby boomers. The two occupation groups with the fastest growth from 2007 to 2013 among boomers was health care support, 26%, and health care practitioners, 22%. Boomers added the most total new jobs in office and administrative occupations, nearly 350,000, up 10%.
- Computer jobs grew 10 times faster for boomers than millennials. Nationally, computer and mathematics jobs rose 2% for young workers from 2007 to 2013, compared to 20% for boomers.
- This key area of the STEM economy has decreased among millennials in New York City (-2%), Chicago (-2%), and Los Angeles (-6%), while it’s grown in tech centers such Austin, Texas (9%), San Francisco (12%), Baltimore (13%) and Seattle (13%). The fastest millennial computer and math occupation growth has been in Charleston, S.C. (40%), and San Luis Obispo, Calif. (39%). Among boomers, computer and math jobs rose at least 35% in Denver, San Jose, Green Bay, Wis., Raleigh, N.C., Provo-Orem, Utah, and Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, Arkansas-Missouri.
To view an interactive map and table of 175 U.S. metros supplement to this report, visit this website.
Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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