Severe' Blue-Collar Worker Shortage to Worsen as Baby Boomers Retire

A Conference Board report concludes that blue-collar industries like manufacturing and construction are facing a "severe" employee shortage that will only exacerbate as young people fail to fill jobs left by retiring baby boomers, reports Fox Business . The authors said young people are turning to college for white-collar jobs rather than trade school or apprenticeships in agriculture, mining, manufacturing, construction, and transportation. Concurrently, many baby boomers are retired or approaching retirement. "This shortage is . . . a result of several long-run demographic and educational trends that converge in a perfect storm-like fashion, and that could make these shortages even more severe in the coming decades," warned The Conference Board's Gad Levanon. "These shortages are a much more immediate and important problem than the risk of massive unemployment due to robots taking our jobs at some point in the future." Potentially rising costs and quality of blue-collar services is a greater concern than previously because companies are more willing to hire candidates who are unqualified or have been out of the workforce for years. "Without a concerted effort by companies and governments, the nation's overall standard of living will decline, along with profits in blue-collar-heavy industries such as transportation, warehousing, and manufacturing," The Conference Board concluded.