Nearly One Out of Four Workers in Oregon is 55 or Older

Oregon’s workforce is aging. The number of Oregon jobs held by workers age 55 and over more than tripled from 1992 to 2018, while the total number of jobs grew by just over 50 percent. Workers 55 years and over held just 10 percent of the jobs in 1992. By 2018, that share increased to 23 percent. Driving this trend is the fact that much of the Baby Boomer Generation is now 55 and over, and they are more likely to be in the labor force than previous generations were at this age. Many of these workers are probably planning to retire in the next 10 years, taking their skills and experience with them. Although the aging workforce is a general demographic trend, it impacts employers, industries, and regions to varying degrees.

Industry age profiles vary from the relatively young accommodation and food services sector where just 15 percent of workers are 55 and over to the relatively old mining and quarrying sector where 32 percent of workers are 55 and over. Although natural resources and utilities have high concentrations of older workers, they employ fewer workers than many industries and will require relatively few replacement workers. Some employers within industries with a large number of workers 55 years and older may struggle to find enough suitable workers if they don’t plan ahead. Health care (both private and public) stands out for the size of its aging workforce, with 65,000 workers age 55 and over. Other industries with a large number of workers nearing retirement age are manufacturing (48,000 workers), retail trade (44,000), and private and public educational services (42,000).

Rural Counties Have Older Workforces

Rural county workforces tend to have a higher share of older workers and will feel the impact of the aging workforce more than metro counties. In rural counties more than one out of four workers is 55 years or older. That represents approximately 84,000 workers in rural Oregon who are probably hoping to retire within the next decade.

To learn more, read workforce analyst Michael Doughty's full article here. 

Are Millennials More Prone to Job Hopping than Previous Generations?

While on vacation, my father (a baby boomer) was lamenting about how millennials are so much more “flaky” as employees, constantly jumping from one job to another. This was the classic “millennials are job hoppers” myth that has become widespread. But is it true? Are millennials likely to job hop more frequently than previous generations? For some clarification, the Pew Research Center defines generations based on the below following age groupings. The oldest Millennials are on the door step of 40.

Perhaps the stereotype comes from comparing millennials today to older generations today. In other words, comparing the job stability of 22 to 34 year olds versus those in their 40s and 50s. Looking at the current Oregon snapshot from 2018 we see that the employment churn rate for millennials, younger workers from their mid-20s to late 30s, is higher than among older workers. And, the youngest cohort of workers, Gen Z (or I Gen), posted an even higher rate of churn than millennials. Millennials’ churn rate was roughly 11 percent in 2018. This means that roughly 10 percent to 15 percent of stable jobs held by millennials end in a given quarter. The employment churn rate is around 8 percent for Gen X and even slightly lower for most boomers.

We would expect these more established workers to have a much lower churn rate regardless of any generational differences. Inversely, we would expect young workers, those beginning a career, working part-time while attending school, or starting a family, to have a higher rate of employment churn. A more fair, apples-to-apples, comparison would be to compare the churn rate of current millennials to the churn rate of Gen X and Boomer workers when they were the same age.

It turns out that if we compare Boomers and Gen X workers when they were in their late 20s and 30s to the current crop (i.e., today’s millennials) we see that the churn rate is nearly identical. Millennials are not leaving stable jobs at a faster pace than their parents when they were at the same age. In fact, for several years the older millennials posted notably lower churn rates than previous generations. This was likely the impact of the most recent recession. Typically, churn rates accelerate during economic expansions when labor demand is high and the supply is relatively low. The most recent recession was so severe that younger workers did not have the luxury of job hopping since there were relatively few jobs to hop into.Next time a Gen Xer or Boomer complains about millennials being discontent and constantly jumping from one job to another, remind them that they likely did the same thing when they were younger.

Read Regional Economist Damon Runberg's full article here.