Worker Bees

My Sweet Irreplaceable You

Final score….73 to 48. That’s 73 million baby boomers and 48 million GenXers. If all the baby boomers left the labor market at the same time, the American economy could not sustain itself.

Wow! Makes you want to quit tomorrow if it weren’t for the negative consequences. But seriously, this is serious. It’s not a question of experience or competence, it’s just plain arithmetic. As large numbers of boomers leave the workforce, there are not enough employees to take their place.

Employers may have to reach down to the farm team level to tap Gen Yers (born between 1980 and 2000), but there’s a big concern about whether they are ready and whether their work culture will clash big time with the remaining boomers.

While boomers are typically obsessed with their work, Gen Yers generally seek a greater balance between work and life interests. Often characterized as high performance and high maintenance, they lack the experience of even Gen Xers. Bottom line, the Yers will have a tough time filling the shoes of the more seasoned baby boomers.

Experts are telling employers that the next 10 years could be a very rocky road if they are unable to hold onto the talent they already have. The successful businesses will find a way to keep employees engaged and committed to the company’s goals, but after years of downsizing and merger-acquisition frenzies, that’s easier said than done. Plus, the burgeoning start-ups are looking to poach the Gen Xer talent from more established businesses, making the remaining baby boomers even more valuable workers.

Articles about boomers staying on the job well past conventional retirement age are now a weekly staple. Just recently I read about an 81 year-old bartender and an 82 year-old waiter working at the same restaurant. They didn’t want to sit around at home and get fat and they liked coming to work, even if it was only part-time. Youthful workers at the other end of the spectrum just don’t see it that way, and if you think that’s not your problem, remember, we need them to cover our social security benefits.

In any case, I’m beginning to feel a little bit like Sally Field when she accepted her Oscar. “You like me. You really like me.”

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Dimension or Dementia

I was amused to read Neil Genzlinger’s article in the Television section of the New York Times last week

He was licking his chops over the discomfort that some 20-somethings are soon going to feel as their progeny insists that their world must be 3-D or nothing. Genzlinger was going to take pleasure seeing them inducted into the Dinosaur Club.

There is a big change coming to television and the generational faultlines are already starting to groan. We all remember when TV went from black and white to color what a seismic shift that was. More recently, we moved to high-definition and that has helped us realize that everyone has bad skin. We just couldn’t see it until high-def came along.

Now, it would appear that everyone over 18 or 19 years old will be scratching their heads trying to figure out why we can’t get along with out 3-D TV. Never mind that constant viewing in 3-D gives most people a headache, it’s new,Retirement for Dummies book cover it’s here, it’s now, so we gotta have it.

If we needed something to drive the final nails into to the coffin of smart, dialog driven drama or comedies, 3-D is the perfect vehicle (or should I say villain). It’s made for action sequences where things fly off the wall or better yet, coming flying toward you so that the bowl of popcorn resting in your lap is tossed all over the sofa. Will it enhance the storyline? Doubtful. Is it the next big thing? Doubtless. Will you end up having to buy a 3-D TV in the next 5 years? Likely. Because there won’t be any 2-D TVs on the market anymore.

The only consolation in all this, is the same glee expressed by Genzlinger. The curtain is going to drop on generations that thought they were the cutting edge, only to wake up one day to realize that the edge has passed them by. You want to tell to cheer up. There will probably be a big catalog of 2-D programs that they can watch late at night when their 3-D kids have finally turned off all their high-tech toys and gone to bed.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.