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Baby boomers key to jobs outlook: staffing execs

The aging Baby Boomer generation is key to the U.S. employment outlook over the next few years, as 60-somethings either retire or choose to work shorter hours, staffing executives say.

Employers are increasingly concerned about filling positions and are turning to older workers to train the next generation of leaders.

As a result, many Baby Boomers, or those born in the years immediately following World War Two, will transition from permanent to temporary positions, driving long-term demand for companies that provide recruitment and other staffing services.

Such a worker is “probably 55 to 60 years old and wants to work a little bit, and the employer needs his skills,” said Roy Krause, Chief Executive of Spherion Corp. “They may not need them 60 hours a week, but they need them for certain projects.”

Spherion clients are starting to see this demographic shift as a major human resources issue, Krause said. The CEO said he recently met a Fortune 50 client who was “extremely worried” about a lack of skills in mid-management, and was looking for ideas on how to bring workers back for short-term projects.

“We’re predicting it’s going to happen on a national scale,” Krause said about the shift from permanent to temporary jobs. “You have to be prepared for it over the next two to three years.”

Jonas Prising, who heads North American operations at Manpower Inc., said demographics is a key long-term issue for employers. “Over the next five years, it will be an increasingly obvious element in the labor pool,” he said.

Certain sectors can expect higher-than-average wage gains, Prising said, including sectors that are service-led, or dependent on professional skills, continuing recent trends.

The U.S. economy added a higher-than-expected 132,000 workers outside the farm sector last month, with all the new jobs in service industries.

The November jobs report indicated steady demand for workers, despite a slightly higher unemployment rate, Manpower’s Prising said.

“It’s been pretty steady for a while. It seems like employers are careful in their hiring intentions but they’re not engaging in mass layoffs,” he said. “They’re very particular about not hiring talent unless it fills their need or criteria at the time.”

Shares of staffing companies were mostly lower on Friday.

Manpower lost 45 cents to $71.69 and Robert Half International Inc. fell 63 cents to $37.37, while Spherion lost 11 cents to $7.17, all on the New York Stock Exchange.

But Monster Worldwide Inc. , parent of the jobs Web site Monster.com, gained 51 cents to $45.76 on the Nasdaq. Shares of Swiss-based Adecco SA , the world’s largest temporary staffing company, were also higher.

“The healthy non-farm payroll adds should somewhat allay investor recessionary fears, but we recognize macro risks of a lagged effect,” Bear Stearns analyst Andrew Steinerman said in a research note.

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