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Tippin The Scales
 In a past article titled, “Don’t Say I Didn’t Tell Ya!” I wrote about the amazing opportunity that young professionals will have once the baby boomers start retiring in 2010. It has been estimated that 10 million more jobs will be available than there will be people to fill them. I urged young people to prepare now for this mass exodus because they can hopefully poise themselves for one of these highly coveted positions.
In a class I attend at USF, Engineering Policy and Management, the capstone of the entire master’s degree, the apex of all the education in grad school, my professor posted the aforementioned article in the discussion forum. Realizing that we all are about to graduate and enter the workforce, Dr. McCright hoped that it would provoke thought about future jobs for engineers.
I never had the idea that anyone would disagree with me, I simply thought it was a benign subject. I read the first reply with a bit of a surprise, and I thought maybe it was a fluke. Maybe this particular student just saw things differently. But as the replies poured in, many of them came back disagreeing.
I have never been against disagreement,as it actually is a tool that can help us either firm our existing ideas or can help us learn the truth (if pride doesn’t get in the way first). After reading some of the replies from my classmates, I realized they had very good points that I had never pondered. They were so interesting in fact that I decided to place a few of their clever remarks in this article.
For instance this student believed the baby boomer’s retirement wouldn’t be all that big.
“I just don’t see the next 10 years unfolding as brightly and opportunistically as predicted. For one thing, I doubt all these baby boomers are going to retire and instead will work on until they are actually unable to do their job. The reason is that many of these people will want to continue working to maintain a constant income because the future of social security, healthcare for the elderly, and the instability of the economy. These people would feel more secure working than rolling the dice and hoping the rest falls into place. Even if these people have excellent retirement plans, we saw from GM recently that doesn’t mean anything because many of their retirees who thought they had it made in retirement had much of that stripped away.”
He went on to say, “Also, Hank, when you say there will be 10,000,000 more jobs in 2010 than there are people to supply them, are you talking about jobs in general (including minimum wage jobs) or strictly engineering jobs? If that’s 10 million engineering jobs, then I’d like to know your source for that number because that seems incredibly high considering there are only 320 to 330 million people in the US.” —C. Preslopsky
Mr. Preslopsky had a good point. Those 10 million extra jobs will be from all industries, not just engineering; and that figure does seem high, but I wrote him back with the source, statistics from the Bureau of Labor.
An older student in the class chimed in with a similar response.
“As a member of the Baby Boomer generation (yes, I’m over 50), I can tell you that I have no intention of retiring anytime soon, and a number of my friends who are 50+ years old feel the same way. The reasons are many, but I would like to offer a few for thought.
First, today’s average life expectancy is around 80 years of age. What do you think all those Baby Boomers are going to do with all that free time after they retire? They may retire from a company or an industry, but I feel certain that it won’t be long before they become bored and return to the work force.
Another reason has to do with finances. I’m not sure today’s retirement savings will be enough to cover 20+ years of living. Besides, the Baby Boomer generation seems to have additional obligations. I read one article that referred to our generation as the “sandwich” / “squeezed” generation. We are still helping our children while taking care of our parents. With the cost of education, cars, homes, medical, etc., many young people need help getting started with their adult life. On the other side, our parents simply didn’t realize they would live this long, and the cost to maintain the “quality of life” for them can be quite expensive. It seems like everyone in my age group has the same problems. I really don’t feel that our retirement programs will be able to maintain this type of financial burden.
Finally, I don’t feel that my generation is going to just step aside and let a younger generation have all the fun. These are good times for engineers and the future looks great. Technology is changing at a furious rate, and opportunities are endless in this country and the new global economy. The fun is just starting, and I plan to work as an engineer for many years to come.” —W. Schuller
This is very true—my parents are nearing retirement age and they are still helping me get started, I ain’t gonna lie!
This next response is my favorite. I never thought much about this and it is also poignantly correct.
“Talking about being prepared for the baby boomers retirement, I want to say that while you guys wait until 2010 for those jobs, there are people taking the ones available today. Keep in mind that we are in the country of opportunities. Some of us who came from neighboring or far countries look for the opportunity, prepare ourselves and take it. While you guys keep waiting for the 2010 opportunities to come, immigrants like me will take the jobs available today. It is a reality, every day hundreds of well prepared professionals migrate to the US; while most people are worrying about low wage jobs being taken by hard working fellows from Mexico or central America, a wave of professionals from countries where opportunities - like those seen here - simply do not exist move to the US to fill a job market that demands thousands of professionals”
— C. Uribe
He had a very good point, there are many immigrants coming to America, realizing the opportunity and acting on it. If we hold out too long, many opportunities will pass by us.
These remarks were just some of the dozens that were posted in the forum. By discussing issues like these, we can obtain more knowledge and insight from people with different perspectives.
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