Shifting Needs of Baby Boomers
Chances are your business has made a lot of money serving the baby boomer demographic and the longer you have been in business, the more money you have made or are making serving baby boomers.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that for some businesses, the outlook is not so great - question is will you be one of the businesses benefiting or hurting from the demographic shifts? Read on to learn more.
Simple Facts
The generation that follows Baby Boomer’s is Gen X which is approx. 85% the size of the baby boomer segment.
As boomers age and exit buying your product or service the pie shrinks. (source Kenneth W. Gronbach, KGC Direct)
As the baby boom generation entered a market they reshaped it by pushing demand through the roof. When, they needed to furnish their first home or new car manufacturers could not build them fast enough. When boomers stop buying certain products and services the same thing happens, in reverse, your revenue drops.
Are you prepared?
Most business people do not think ahead to anticipate what will happen when the baby boomer stops buying their goods or services. You can start selling to the Gen X market, except the size of that generation is just 85% the size of the boomers.
Tracking Age Bands Over a Decade (read Management Gap)
Perhaps the fact that the Gen X’rs are just 85% of the baby boomers is enough to get your attention. I decided to look ahead and see what happens to our workforce over the next 10 years.
Look at What Happens to The Pie
As you can see by 2010 the total number of Baby Boomers in the workforce could drop from 44% to 33% and the number of Gen X’rs drops from 42% to 40% by 2010 with the number of Gen X’s increasing to 44% in 2015.
(click to view larger versions)
While my approach to coming up with these numbers is not scientific, it does show the general trend and if true, illustrates that recruiting and keeping Gen X’s to manage your business will be a real challenge over the next decade. Add in the number of baby boomers leaving the workforce and we have a potential crises in the making.
If you haven’t yet felt the impact of baby boomers reducing or stopping purchases of your goods or services you will eventually. Unless you adjust and your products and services to meet their changing needs.
Knowing this you can begin to plan now and approach major business decisions from a more realistic and matter-of-fact perspective. Which is always better than having your head stuck in the sand.
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