[With baby boomers preparing to retire as the best educated and most skilled workforce in U.S. history, a growing chorus of demographers and labor experts is raising concerns that workers in California and the nation lack the critical skills needed to replace them.
In particular, experts say, the immigrant workers needed to fill many of the boomer jobs lack the English-language skills and basic educational levels to do so. Many immigrants are ill-equipped to fill California's fastest-growing positions, including computer software engineers, registered nurses and customer service representatives, a new study by the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute found.
Immigrants -- legal and illegal -- already constitute almost half of the workers in Los Angeles County and are expected to account for nearly all of the growth in the nation's working-age population by 2025 because native-born Americans are having fewer children. But the study, based largely on U.S. Census data, noted that 60% of the county's immigrant workers struggle with English and one-third lack high school diplomas.
Nearly one-third of all Americans -- 76 million people -- were born between 1946 and 1964. Boomer retirements are projected to open up nearly 1 million jobs in Los Angeles County and 3 million in California in the next decade.
The investments more than paid off: Every dollar invested in public education produces $8 in added tax revenues, according to Myers. He and others worry that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed cuts in the education budget could cripple efforts to produce the well-educated and skilled workers California urgently needs.]-LAT
