Slow growth could be good for job seekers

In five years, most baby boomers will have retired, leaving many job vacancies for recent graduates and young people in California, according to a report released Tuesday.

The ratio of seniors older than 65 years to working-age Californians will increase from about 20 seniors per 100 working-age Californians to 28 seniors in 2020 and 36 seniors in 2030, according to the report “Generational Projections of the California Population by Nativity and Year of Immigrant Arrival.”

“We all hear about the problems of today,” said Dowell Myers, co-author of the report and a USC professor of urban planning and demography. “It’s a tough, tough job market, and people just can’t imagine how it can turn around, but within five years, it turns around big time and actually goes in the opposite direction. … We will have a shortage of workers.”

In the past 20 years, California’s population of working-age people — ages 25 to 64 — grew by 4.2 million people. In the next 20 years, however, the population is expected to slow its growth and increase by 3.3 million, according to the report, also authored by senior research associate John Pitkin in the Population Dynamics Research Group.

“We’re facing this enormous change in the next 20 years,” Myers said. “The baby boomer generation is retiring right now. … There will be more job openings, there will be easier promotions, there will be more homes people are trying to sell and [young people] will be the buyers.”

Shoshana Polansky, a senior majoring in sociology, said she believes more jobs will become available, but the transition will take time.

“I don’t see baby boomers retiring in five years, but the thoughts behind it make sense,” said Polansky, who is currently applying for full-time jobs. “‘There’s no jobs’ is what everyone was saying, and I think that it’s more like, ‘Are there jobs that you’re qualified for?’”

As the population becomes top heavy with retirees, California’s overall population will see dramatically less growth than the state previously projected. The California Department of Finance showed the state reaching a population of 50 million people by 2032, yet the report found that California’s population will reach 50 million more than a decade later in 2046.

The report found a different projection because the demographers of the report used the most recent 2010 census data in its estimations and closely considered California’s immigrant population, said Myers, who found the California population was 1.8 million lower than the state had projected.

“[California was] way off because they were over expecting how much migration would be coming into California,” Myers said.

Immigration, particularly from Mexico, has decreased and will continue to decrease, Myers said. California’s population of children — 18 years old and below — will also decrease and nearly halt growth. Between 1990 and 2010, the child population grew by 1.6 million, whereas by 2030, the child population will decrease by 4.2 percentage points.

“In general, there will be fewer people trying to go to college because there are fewer kids, except that’s bad for society.” Myers said. “We need to have more college graduates, not fewer.”

With fewer children in California’s future, educating youth should be the state’s priority, Myers said.

“With young people better educated, you get better taxpayers … if you have better taxpayers, that takes care of all the problems,” Myers said.

Polansky said higher education is essential in securing the future.

“Losing sight of funding for higher education is going to be one of the poorest choices that we can make for our economy in the future,” Polansky said. “I’m hopeful that if companies and the government and voters alike refocus their attention on the importance of an educated workforce, then I’m confident that there will be plenty more jobs than there are today.”