The United States is moving toward an historic workforce contraction, where Baby Boomer retirements will reduce the ranks of employees and artificial intelligence will increasingly augment more jobs currently done by humans alone.
That was the message that Cali Williams Yost, the founder of the Flex+Strategy Group, delivered to attendees at the recent Workforce Development Summit sponsored by Focus NJ and NJBIA.
“By 2032, there is going to be between 5 and 6 million fewer workers,” Yost said. “And it’s going to be most acute next year when 11,000 Baby Boomers will retire every day...bringing their skills, bringing their institutional knowledge with them.”
A decade ago, the U.S. retirement rate was 10,000 workers a day, she said. What is important to understand and prepare for is that the increasing retirement rate and coming workforce deficit is structural, not cyclical.
“There will be no rebound. We’re never going to have the talent excess that we had from the 1980s through the 2010s,” Yost said.
The challenge is to provide the upskilling that the current workforce needs, especially those whose jobs will become increasingly augmented by AI, she said.
To watch a video of her presentation, go here.
