Perfect Labor Storm 2.0

More Perfect Labor Storm Facts #301 to 305

Fact #301:  The ratio of entry level wage earners to retirees has fallen from 9 to 1 in 1955 to 4 to 1 in 1995 to 2 to 1 by 2020.  (Source: Hudson Institute)

Fact #302:  In 1991 less than 24% of dentists were over age 54 and past their most productive years. (Source: American Dental Association)

Fact #303: By 2010 over 38% of practicing dentists will be older than 54, a 60% increase. (Source: American Dental Association)

Fact #304:  The labor market grew approximately 1.2 % a year in the 1990s.  From 2000 to 2010 is expected to grow only 0.8%.  From 2010 to 2020 growth declines to 0.4 percent and 0.2 percent from 2020 on.

Fact #305:   Active adults account for 60% of all healthcare spending.  They purchase 70% of all prescriptions and 51% of all over the counter drugs.

Coming Soon: Major Labor Shortage

Coming Soon to a Location Near You: Major Labor Shortage -

Featured in HRWire, November 1, 2004

Fact #296:  Half of today's working nurses will reach retirement age by 2015 (Source: John Challenger)

Fact #297:   The average age of construction workers is approaching the mid-50s. (Source: John Challenger)

Fact #298:  By 2006, 31 percent of workers in the federal government - nearly half a million - will be eligible to retire. (Source: John Challenger)

Fact #299:  Nationally 14 percent of the workforce is 55 or older. (Source: BLS)
Fact #300: While one in eight Americans was 65+ in 1999, this ratio will rise to one in five by 2030, (Source: U.S. Census Bureau)

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Will Retail Employees Sell Out Their Employers?

According to a recent CareerBuilder.com survey, it appears retail workers will jump ship just as hiring steps up.

Fact  #291:   21 percent of retail workers plan to change job in the fourth quarter of 2004. (Source: CareerBuilder.com)

Fact  #292:   49 percent of retail hiring managers say they'll add workers to their staffs by the end of 2004.  (Source: CareerBuilder.com)

Fact  #293;   50 percent of retail workers say they're upset with their pay and have not received a raise this year.. (Source: CareerBuilder.com)

Fact  #294:   62 percent of those polled said their workloads have increased in the last six months. (Source: CareerBuilder.com)

Fact  #295:  44 percent of retail workers say they're being asked to do too much. (Source: CareerBuilder.com)

Don't be caught in storm without all the facts. "The Perfect Labor Storm Fact Book: Why Worker Shortages Won't Go Away" is a must-read leading edge forecast that predicts workforce trends for decades to come. Order your copy today

Americans Working More, Sleeping Less - Should Employers Be Worried?

Fact #316: The percentage of US employers offering paid vacations dropped to 87 percent in 2003 from 95 percent in 1999, (Source: SHRM)

Fact #317: Americans receive 16 days off each year, but are so consumed with work that they take 14. Italians receive 42; the French, 37; Germans, 35, and South Korean and Japanese employees get 25 each. (Source: Expedia.com)

Fact #318: As many as 47 million adults may be putting themselves at risk for injury, health and behavior problems because they aren't meeting their minimum sleep need in order to be fully alert the next day. (Source: National Sleep Foundation)

Fact #319: Nearly 40 percent of US employees working more than 50 hours per week. (Source: National Sleep Foundation)

Fact #320: Two-thirds of older adults (67%) report frequent sleep problems, however only a small fraction, one in eight, says those problems have been diagnosed. (Source: National Sleep Foundation)

Fact #321: Direct costs of insomnia, which include dollars spent on insomnia treatment, healthcare services, hospital and nursing home care, are estimated at nearly $14 billion annually. Indirect costs such as work loss, property damage from accidents and transportation to and from healthcare providers, are estimated to be $28 billion. (Source: National Sleep Foundation and NIH)

More Facts About Changes in Workplace Demographics at Perfect Labor Storm.com

How will employers afford sick leave and health insurance?

Fact #314: About half the full time workforce gets no paid sick days. (Source: U.S. Department of Labor)

Fact #315: The number of employers offering emergency back-up child care or child care when employees have sick family members has dropped from 14 percent in 2001 to 9 percent in 2004. (Source: SHRM)

Fact #322: 15 medical conditions accounted for half of the inflation-adjusted growth of $200 billion in health spending between 1987 and 2000. (Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services)

Fact #323: The five illnesses where costs increased the most between 1987 and 2000 were heart disease, asthma, mental disorders, cancer and hypertension. (Source: Health Affairs, August 2004)

Fact #324: The cost of treating heart disease rose 70 percent, diabetes by 44 percent. (Source: Health Affairs, August 2004)

More Facts about Changes in Workplace Demographics at Perfect Labor Storm.com

Employees Who Fail To Show Up For Work

Fact #306: The rate of unscheduled absenteeism has climbed to a five-year high of 2.4 percent. (Source: CCH Inc.)

Fact #307: Late minute no-shows cost organizations an average of $610 per employee. (Source: CCH Inc.)

Fact #308: Only 38 percent of employee who fail to show up for work are due to personal illness. 62 percent are for other reasons including family issues (23 percent), personal needs (18 percent), stress (11 percent) and entitlement mentality (10 percent). (Source: CCH Inc.)

Fact #309: Paying the price for low morale: Organizations reporting low employee moral have higher rates and costs of absenteeism. Rates are more than one-third higher among companies with poor/fair morale. (Source: CCH Inc.)

Fact #310: Employers with poor'fair morale set aside 4.9 percent of their budgets to cover the costs of absent workers compared to just 4.0 percent for organizations with good/very good morale. (Source: CCH Inc.)

Fact #311: Companies with low morale are more likely to experience unscheduled absenteeism due to stress (15 percent). (Source: CCH Inc.)

Fact #312: Employees showing up sick for work (presenteeism) is a far bigger problem for companies with low morale - 52 percent of organizations with poor/fair morale compared to 31 percent with organizations with good/very good morale. (Source: CCH Inc.)

Fact #313: 39 percent of employers said presenteeism is a problem in their organizations.
(Source: CCH Inc.)

More facts on why workers shortages will not go away.

Health Care Worker Shortages

While the population ages, so do the health care workers.  An aging population uses health care services more often but the population of heath care workers is shrinking in many cases.

Fact #286:  In 2000, physicians spent an estimated 32 percent of patient care hours providing services to the age 65 and older population. If current consumption patterns continue, this percentage could increase to 39 percent by 2020. (Source: HRSA)

Fact #287:  The aging population will increase the demand for physicians per thousand population from 2.8 in 2000 to 3.1 in 2020. Demand for full-time-equivalent (FTE) registered nurses per thousand population would increase from 7 to 7.5 during this same period. (Source: HRSA)

Fact #288: The aging of the health workforce raises concerns that many health professionals will retire about the same time that demand for their services is increasing. Furthermore, the declining proportion of the population age 18 to 30 raises concerns regarding the ability to attract a sufficient number of new health workers. (Source: HRSA)

Fact #289: The aging population could result in rising average patient acuity, which could in turn require higher nurse and physician staffing levels. (Source: HRSA)

Fact #290: Total requirements for FTE RNs are expected to increase from approximately 2 million in 2000 to 2.8 million in 2020 (a 41 percent increase). Requirements for FTE LPNs are expected to increase from 618,000 in 2000 to 905,000 in 2020 (a 46 percent increase). There is an expected increase in FTE nurse aide and home health aide requirements from 1.5 million in 2000 to 2.3 million in 2020 (a 50 percent increase). (Source: HRSA)

More information about worker shortages.

What Keeps HR Professionals Awake At Night?

Written by Ira S. Wolfe for Business2Business, November 2004

It's 3 AM . Patti Martin, human resource manager at Union National Community Bank in Mt. Joy , stirs from a deep sleep and groggily reaches for the paper and pen on her bedside table. “I can't fall back to sleep unless I write down what I was thinking,” says Martin. She's one of the lucky ones. From time to time, she gets a full night's sleep.

Tossing and turning all night.

Many of Martin's colleagues don't share her good fortune. Instead of enjoying restful slumber they toss and turn, agonizing over work-related problems.

What keeps human resources managers such as Martin awake night after night? In a nutshell, the increasingly difficult job of assuring their employers have enough skilled staff to deliver products and services on time and in a manner that assures excellent customer satisfaction. These days that's a tough job, and it gets more and more difficult as time goes by.

The source of the difficulty lay in forces beyond Martin's, or any other HR professional's, control. The 2004-2005 Workplace Forecast: A Strategic Outlook compiled by the Society of Human Resources Management, identifies the top 10 trends most likely to impact on the workplace. To ignore them means harsh implications for managing a workforce. The trends include rising health care costs, domestic safety and security, use of technology, growing complexity of legal compliance, focus on global security, an aging workforce with too few skilled replacements, e-learning, outsourcing manufacturing jobs, and the changing definition of family.

Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, reiterates this concern. Citing the Aspen Institute report, Grow Faster Together. Or Grow Slowly Apart. How Will America Work in the 21st Century?, he wrote “the United States is given a dramatic wake-up call about a major crisis of the merican workforce. This crisis arises from a worker gap, a skills gap, and a wage gap that, if not properly addressed, will threaten U.S. competitiveness and indeed our very way of life.”

All this dramatically affects the human resources function. To learn more about how local human resources managers felt about these challenges, I contacted several of them and asked them “what human resources issues keep you awake at night?” (We excluded health care benefits and insurance from our discussions because nearly everyone agreed it is a major problem.) Here's what I learned.   

Skilled Workers - Perfect Labor Storm Facts #271 to #275

Many people believe education is the cure for the impending (and even current) skilled worker shortages. Few however are willing to address how serious the situation really is.

Fact #271: Fewer than one in four high school graduates who took the ACT test have taken the coursework necessary to succeed in college. (Source: ACT, Inc)

Fact #272: Only 22 percent of the 1.2 million high school graduates who took the exam this year (2004) were ready for college coursework in math, English and science. (Source: ACT, Inc)

Fact #273: Skills that employers are increasingly demanding are ability to work in a team, solve complex problems, and communicate clearly in print and in person. (Source: Coplin, 10 Things Employers Want You to Learn in College)

Fact #274: Skills that will keep workers marketable in the near term are self-motivation, time management, strong oral and written communication, relationship building, salesmanship, problem solving, information evaluation and leadership. (Source: Futurist Update, Feb 2004)

Fact #275: In the future, even more emphasis will be placed on skills that cannot be automated - caring, judgment, intuition, ethics, inspiration, friendliness, and imagination. (Source: Futurist, Sep-Oct 2004)

More Facts available at "The Perfect Labor Storm" website.

Presenteeism

Presenteeism isn't about pretending to be ill to avoid work or surfing the Internet when you should be preparing a report. Presenteeism is productivity loss resulting from real health problems.

Fact #276: Depression set U.S. employers back $35 billion a year. (Source: JADA)

Fact #277: Arthritis, headaches, and back problems cost U.S employers nearly $47 billion a year. (Source: JADA)

Fact #278: The total cost of presenteeism in the United States is more than $105 billion a year. (Source: American Productivity Audit)

Fact #279: On-the-job productivity loss resulting from depression and pain is roughly 3X greater than absence-related productivity loss attributed to these conditions. (Source: American Productivity Audit)

Fact #280: Allergies, which affect rougly 25% of the U.S. population during the spring and fall seasons cause a productivity loss of 7 percent among workers. (Source: American Productivity Audit)