This year has long been marked as a time when higher education would reach a much-dreaded period — deemed “the demographic cliff” — where the number of high school graduates begins to decline due to the United States’ steadily falling birth rate. Many employers are only now realizing the real-life ramifications this anticipated drop off will have on the labor market.
According to recent Lightcast data, the falling number of young people will lend to a “massive labor shortage,” with an estimated six million fewer workers in 2032 than jobs needing to be filled. This shortage in birthrate combined with baby boomers and elder GenXers retiring while millennials and GenZers embrace a “work to live vs. live to work” mantra — giving rise to the gig economy – will result in the talent pool shrinking at an unprecedented rate.
