Retiring baby boomers creating high tech talent crisis

By Stuart Corner
Monday, 02 July 2007 07:29

Market

"Where have all the baby boomers gone?...Into retirement every one," to paraphrase the old Pete Seeger anti-war song. That's the story to emerge from Deloitte's survey global survey of the CEOs of the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 - the fastest growing high tech companies around the world.

"This year's big story is people," says the report. "Baby Boomers are beginning to retire in droves and there are simply not enough young people to replace them...This talent crisis - which is expected to last for decades - has the potential to make the dot-com talent crunch of the late 1990s look like a walk in the park."

According to Deloitte's "Experts have long predicted a global talent shortage driven by baby boomer retirements, declining birth rates, and long-term educational trends. However, it was not until this year that the talent issue seemed to really hit home."

Exacerbating the problem is a booming high tech sector. "The majority of surveyed companies plan to expand their workforce by more than 25 percent over the next year. However, over the long term, a chronic shortage of talent represents the biggest obstacle to sustaining this impressive growth," the report says.

"The problem is particularly severe in developed countries where decades of declining birth rates and shifting education patterns are producing chronic talent shortages in science, technology engineering and healthcare - all of which are at the heart of the Deloitte Fast 500."

The report identifies the Internet, and wireless as the two sectors with the strongest growth potential. "Looking beyond the talent challenge, the CEOs of the world's fastest-growing technology companies expect the Internet and IP-related market segments to continue to offer the greatest potential for growth over the next 12 months - and beyond...Wireless communications services are also expected to be a high-growth area, although in the long term, life sciences could mount a strong challenge for the second spot."