Canada’s Baby Boomers, otherwise known as “The Grey Tsunami” will all be 65 and older in 8 years. The Gen Xers and Gen Yers may well be thinking: GREAT, it’s about time people with different, new, and better ways of thinking and working will be running things. No argument there. For humanity and society to continue to improve we need to learn from what has been and use it to improve what is and what will be.
Boomers have been, and for another 25 to 35 years will continue to be, the most powerful generation in history. Here are some of the things Boomers are impacting and will continue to impact:
- Canada’s aging population. We already have nearly twice as many people over the age of sixty as under the age of 30, and the fastest-growing demographic in Canada is the group who are 100 and older.
- Critical ongoing shortages of workers in all fields of work.
- An increasing dependency ratio (people who are not working and not contributing to the tax base or paying for public services as compared to those who are).
- Increasing health care costs including hospitalizations, long-term care, and palliative care.
- Demand for more safe non-hospital health care (hospital care costs 76% more than long-term care and more than 600% more than homecare).
- Ongoing unmet home care needs (currently exceeds 400 thousand people).
- Increased percentage of workers – most in their prime earning years – also functioning as unpaid Caregivers. (Already 1 in 4)
- Increased family care job-protected leaves. Every province and territory has at least one form of job-protected leave for caring for family members and 11 of 13 have two or more.
Canadian businesses are struggling and will continue to struggle with finding workers and managing the demands being placed on them and their workforces. And so will most of the rest of the developed world as the Boomers boldly go…