Will Immigrants Save US Economy?

Each day, about 10,000 baby boomers leave the U.S. workforce. Baby boomers are the generation of people born between 1946 and 1964. The COVID-19 pandemic only increased the amount of people retiring as older workers decided to retire early rather than risk getting sick.

"We're running out of workers. Why? Because baby boomers are retiring, and you don't have enough younger workers who are skilled to fill in their spots," said Dana Peterson, chief economist at The Conference Board, a research group.

She said the U.S. is going to have labor shortages. And she added that the pandemic quickened retirements and made labor shortages "more intense."

FILE - Carrying American flags, immigrants march during a peaceful protest against a Florida legislation restricting undocumented immigrants, Thursday, June 1, 2023, in Immokalee, Florida. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

Selcuk Eren is a senior economist at The Conference Board. He said the problem is that for every person leaving, only one person is coming into the labor force. And a slowed-down labor force means limited growth.

He said, "So, one-on-one means that your labor force is not growing, which is going to slow down economic growth, as well."

The federal government workforce is also expected to be hit hard as more boomers retire.

"Forty percent of the federal government is aged 55 or more as of now, so that means that this huge wave of retirements is coming," Eren says. "And you're going to have a difficult time to replace them, because there's not enough younger people, especially with the educational requirements that those jobs require."

Most affected industries

A Conference Board report looks at industries that are likely to have shortages as older Americans leave the workforce. They include physical labor jobs like personal care, food services, cleaning, and jobs involving repairs and building, among others. Production and transportation jobs will also be affected by retiring baby boomers, but less so.

The report finds that the most severe labor shortages will be in health-related jobs as more aging boomers will require personal care.

The possibility for labor shortages is mostly lower in jobs that require a college degree. STEM professionals, or those working in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, are at a lower risk of shortages. Jobs that permit remote work will have less intense labor shortages, the report says.

Possible solutions for labor shortages

Immigration could be a way to lessen the effect of boomers leaving their jobs, Eren says.

Eren said, "That's probably the fastest solution, because it takes time to educate a younger person, to bring them to that skill level." He said, "The fastest solution is just immigration and giving priority to immigrants with those skills that we are going to be lacking. That's number one." He said number two is to keep baby boomers working by giving them incentives to stay in the workforce.

Incentives could include tax and social security policies that do not punish someone who works into their seventies. And offering increased freedoms, like remote or part-time work, to people nearing retirement age.

For Chicago-based college professor Kristin Mariani, retiring baby boomers mean increased opportunities for her students.

She said the effect is "... it's giving younger people, the generations that came after them, to become the change-makers, the decision-makers." Mariani is a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

She added that it is important, "... to make sure that the education and the knowledge that is given to these individuals, that they will be able to move forward with these responsibilities."

I'm Gregory Stachel.

Dora Mekouar reported this story for VOA News. Gregory Stachel adapted it for VOA Learning English.

Words in This Story

spot – n. a particular position in a competition, organization, or program

especially – adv. used to indicate something that deserves special mention

remote – adj. connected to a computer system from another place

priority – n. something that is more important than other things and that needs to be done or dealt with first

incentives – n. something that encourages a person to do something or to work harder

opportunity – n. an amount of time or a situation in which something can be done