Across the U.S. economy, other industries, too, face the same formidable challenge: Replenishing a workforce diminished by a surge of retirements that began during the pandemic and has continued since.
WASHINGTON — Kwasi Bandoh, a senior recruiter for an airline, stood before a group of aviation mechanic students at their graduation ceremony last month and congratulated them for all having jobs.
As happy as the moment was for the graduates, it epitomized the struggles of recruiters like Bandoh, who are desperately seeking mechanics for the airlines, plane manufacturers and repair shops that need them. Most of their existing mechanics are aging, and demand for travel is growing. The aging workforce also helps explain the confounding nature of the economy right now. Even as the Federal Reserve has relentlessly pumped up interest rates to fight high inflation, hiring has remained surprisingly robust. Regardless of where interest rates are, many employers simply need to replace people who have left.
"Everybody's getting ready to retire, and not enough people are coming in to take the jobs," said Mike Myers, a maintenance manager for Piedmont Airlines, in Hagerstown, a regional feeder for American Airlines. In the past year, the air travel industry has hired roughly 45,000 people, enlarging its workforce by 9%, to more than a half-million. That's triple the pace of the U.S. economy's overall hiring.
When the now-retiring baby boomers began working, Basu said,"there was the notion that being a blue-collar tradesperson was a solid and secure path to prosperity." But as factories shut down across the country,"the notion increasingly became that for one to become part of the American middle class, one would likely need to have more formal education, namely, a bachelor's degree.
Tom Hood, an executive vice president of the association, said the industry is finding it hard to attract young college graduates. Many of them prefer data science or finance, while accounting struggles with a stuffier, more old-fashioned image.Nela Richardson, chief economist at the payroll provider ADP, said research shows that countries that have many retirees who spend money and consume and have fewer people working typically face higher inflation.
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