The Perfect Labor Storm is here! Aging workers, retiring baby boomers, rising health care costs, shortages of skilled workers, generational gaps, work ethics are just a few of the workforce demographic and socio-economic events that are colliding to produce the biggest shortage of skilled workers in the United States and many other developed countries.
Just as in the movie namesake, several seemingly innocuous weather events collided off the Atlantic coast in the spring of 1991 to produce one of the most powerful weather storms on record (“The Perfect Storm”). Just a decade later, changes in world economics and demographics began to collide in what is shaping up to be “The Perfect Labor Storm”. While shortages of skilled workers and an aging population were predicted nearly 20 years ago, few people could have forecast the impact that technology, globalization, and a Great Recession would have on recruitment, retention, and unemployment.
Many managers and business owners and even economists and strategists are hoping for a break in the socio-economic “climate” and praying this storm too will pass. Human resource professionals, executives, and managers alike wrongly believe they are the isolated targets of some insidious plot to abscond with their workers or fell they are just magnets for under-skilled workers with poor work ethics. Not unlike the Andrea Gail which was sucked under by the colossal waves even two days before the full force of the storm hit, businesses too will sink with this short-sighted, wait-and-see attitude.
The Perfect Labor Storm has no industry or geographic boundaries. From plumbers to dental hygienists to teachers to border patrol to radiologists, virtually every industry at nearly every level is affected by shortages of workers with the right skills and attitudes to do all the jobs.
For the past 10 years this website has become a resource for human resource professionals, executives, managers, students, academics, and researchers. It includes hundreds and hundreds of facts and reasons why The Perfect Labor Storm will not allow worker shortages to go away for a long, long time.
The Perfect Labor Storm makes a great keynote address for Chambers of Commerce and business organizations. To schedule Ira S. Wolfe to address your next meeting or convention or to schedule radio/TV interviews, click here.
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