As Boomers have redefined every life stage they have entered, retirement will be no exception. Here are the facts:
❯❯ Ten thousand Boomers reach American retirement age every day (Pew Research, 2010).
❯❯ One in four boomers plans to have an encore career (MetLife, 2011).
❯❯ Sixty-six percent of all companies in the United States are owned by Baby Boomers (NextAvenue.org, 2015).
❯❯ Thirty-three percent of Boomers are delaying the age at which they retire (AARP 2015).
❯❯ Boomers report that age 62 is “middle-aged” (Forbes, 2014).
❯❯ The industries that hurt the most when Boomers leave are aerospace and defense, government, and healthcare (multiple sources).
Though some Boomers will be retiring in the next decade, all of them won’t be. Remember to align yourself in the right time period – consider that Gen Xers are already in their 50s but so are the youngest Boomers. They have many years ahead of them and aren’t looking to retire anytime soon.
The time is upon you. As Boomers leave, open positions are waiting for the next generation of leaders. While some Gen Xers will seize the available opportunities to succeed, there won’t be enough of them to fill the Boomer vacancies. Millennials need to be targeted now as another generation of leaders.
When Gen Xers entered the workplace, they had no reason to confidently plan their future careers. After all, as eager adolescents, they were told, “You’ll be the first generation who is not going to do as well as your parents.” Talk about a way to inspire and uplift a 20-something ambitious worker! If that weren’t enough, as they grew up and excelled in their careers, they saw not one, not two, but three recessions. Naturally, they seek a stable career, a secure path to success, and a work environment that fosters growth of middle-management. However, many Gen Xers are finding themselves trapped underneath the “gray ceiling.” Boomers are working longer than planned, and Xers are stuck with nowhere to go but side to side when all they want to do is move up.
Want to impress your friends and co-workers with some facts about everyone’s favorite forgotten generation? See the following for some hard-to-believe facts about Gen X:
❯❯ Fifty percent feel stalled in their careers (BBC, 2011).
❯❯ Sixty-eight percent of all INC 50 °CEOs are Gen Xers (Time, 2014).
❯❯ Forty-four percent of Xers believe it is “useless to plan for retirement when everything is so uncertain” – versus 31 percent of Boomers (Allianz, 2015).
❯❯ Sixty-eight percent of Gen Xers feel that they will “never have enough money to stop working” – versus 43 percent of Boomers (Allianz, 2015).
As you plot how to control the uncontrollable perfect storm of Gen Xers’ demographic shift, keep track of the two paths that Gen Xers can chart:
1. The path to senior level jobs.
Many Xers have been waiting patiently in the wings to fill the roles that Boomers will leave vacant. These Xers may likely view the large wave of Millennials eager for leadership as entitled and impatient. A Gen Xer may wonder, “Why should they – who have been working for less time – get a job similar to the level of the one that I’ve been working toward for 15 years?!”
2. The path more traveled.
Many Xers are perfectly happy in their careers and don’t feel the urge to move up the ladder. These Xers will likely be managed by a Millennial someday, if not already. It’s important to understand how to groom Millennials to manage a generation other than their own.
Generation Xers are eager for their next move, so when you look to the next generation of leaders, consider that Millennials aren’t the only population to take the reins. Gen Xers are ready. As Xers and Millennials simultaneously move up the ladder, they’ll have to master working together. In your current role, strategize how you can seamlessly manage and lead this transition. Additionally, note that most of the people managing Millennials are and will be Gen Xers, not Boomers. The tides are shifting.
We hope that you’re ahead of the Millennial wave, or at least riding it, because Millennials already make up the highest percentage of the American workforce. There is a reason that so many articles have been written about this giant generation in the past decade, and one of the biggest reasons is its sheer size.
If you’ve somehow been able to avoid Millennials to date, you won’t be able to for long. Millennials are making major waves in today’s workforce:
❯❯ Millennials will comprise 50 percent of the American workforce by 2020 (Forbes, 2012).
❯❯ Millennials will comprise 75 percent of the global workforce by 2025 (U.S. Census Bureau).
❯❯ Millennials outpace other generations working, comprising 35 percent of the workforce in 2015, according to Pew Research Center, with Gen Xers 1 percent behind (Pew Research, 2015).
❯❯ The majority of Millennials plan to stay in their next job for more than four years (BridgeWorks, 2017).
The aforementioned statistics don’t need a lot of explanation, because the management challenges they cause are likely the reason that you picked up this book. The youngest generation’s attitudes and behaviors at work often baffle and confuse leaders and managers into stereotyping them. In numerous chapters, we pick apart where those stereotypes come from and, in turn, why they are far from the truth.
As a sense of calm comes over you because you’re feeling a genuine connection managing Millennials, prepare yourself for another generation arriving on the workplace landscape. The oldest Generation Edger is almost done with college, so you’re likely working with them already if not preparing to recruit the best of their brightest. You can read much more about Generation Edge in Chapter 16.
If you think Gen Edge will act and look just like mini-Millennials, these stats will tell you otherwise:
❯❯ Ninety percent of Gen Edgers want to see more female leaders in the workplace (BridgeWorks, 2017).
❯❯ Top concerns for Generation Edgers going