(点击右边三个点，可调整速度，电脑上可下载)

听力参考原文 ↓↓↓

[00:00.00]Each day, about 10,000 baby boomers

[00:04.45]leave the U.S. workforce.

[00:07.90]Baby boomers are the generation of people

[00:12.25]born between 1946 and 1964.

[00:18.90]The COVID-19 pandemic only increased the amount of people retiring

[00:25.09]as older workers decided to retire early

[00:30.57]rather than risk getting sick.

[00:33.76]"We're running out of workers. Why?

[00:37.51]Because baby boomers are retiring,

[00:40.86]and you don't have enough younger workers

[00:44.22]who are skilled to fill in their spots," said Dana Peterson,

[00:49.73]chief economist at The Conference Board, a research group.

[00:55.83]She said the U.S. is going to have labor shortages.

[01:00.45]And she added that the pandemic quickened retirements

[01:05.60]and made labor shortages "more intense."

[01:09.61]Selcuk Eren is a senior economist at The Conference Board.

[01:16.36]He said the problem is that for every person leaving,

[01:21.32]only one person is coming into the labor force.

[01:26.13]And a slowed-down labor force means limited growth.

[01:31.59]He said, "So, one-on-one means

[01:36.18]that your labor force is not growing,

[01:39.32]which is going to slow down economic growth, as well."

[01:44.43]The federal government workforce

[01:47.37]is also expected to be hit hard as more boomers retire.

[01:53.43]"Forty percent of the federal government

[01:57.11]is aged 55 or more as of now, so that means

[02:02.44]that this huge wave of retirements is coming," Eren says.

[02:08.13]"And you're going to have a difficult time to replace them,

[02:13.49]because there's not enough younger people,

[02:16.32]especially with the educational requirements that those jobs require."

[02:22.94]A Conference Board report looks at industries

[02:26.96]that are likely to have shortages

[02:29.75]as older Americans leave the workforce.

[02:34.27]They include physical labor jobs like personal care,

[02:39.50]food services, cleaning, and jobs

[02:43.17]involving repairs and building, among others.

[02:47.60]Production and transportation jobs

[02:51.04]will also be affected by retiring baby boomers, but less so.

[02:57.07]The report finds that the most severe labor shortages

[03:01.84]will be in health-related jobs as more aging boomers

[03:07.10]will require personal care.

[03:09.98]The possibility for labor shortages is mostly lower in jobs

[03:16.16]that require a college degree.

[03:19.59]STEM professionals, or those working

[03:23.32]in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics,

[03:28.27]are at a lower risk of shortages.

[03:31.53]Jobs that permit remote work

[03:35.40]will have less intense labor shortages, the report says.

[03:40.61]Immigration could be a way to lessen the effect

[03:45.57]of boomers leaving their jobs, Eren says.

[03:49.76]Eren said, "That's probably the fastest solution,

[03:55.53]because it takes time to educate a younger person,

[03:59.79]to bring them to that skill level."

[04:03.10]He said, "The fastest solution is just immigration

[04:08.24]and giving priority to immigrants with those skills

[04:12.85]that we are going to be lacking. That's number one."

[04:17.38]He said number two is to keep baby boomers working

[04:21.88]by giving them incentives to stay in the workforce.

[04:27.36]Incentives could include tax and social security policies

[04:33.13]that do not punish someone who works into their seventies.

[04:38.56]And offering increased freedoms,

[04:42.16]like remote or part-time work,

[04:45.41]to people nearing retirement age.

[04:48.37]For Chicago-based college professor Kristin Mariani,

[04:54.36]retiring baby boomers mean

[04:57.27]increased opportunities for her students.

[05:00.71]She said the effect is "... it's giving younger people,

[05:05.69]the generations that came after them,

[05:08.67]to become the change-makers, the decision-makers."

[05:13.59]Mariani is a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

[05:21.45]She added that it is important, "… to make sure

[05:25.57]that the education and the knowledge

[05:29.2]that is given to these individuals,

[05:31.52]that they will be able to move forward with these responsibilities."

[05:37.99]I'm Gregory Stachel.

_____________________

Words in This Story

spot – n. a particular position in a competition, organization, or program

especially – adv. used to indicate something that deserves special mention

remote – adj. connected to a computer system from another place

priority – n. something that is more important than other things and that needs to be done or dealt with first

incentives – n. something that encourages a person to do something or to work harder

opportunity – n. an amount of time or a situation in which something can be done

本文来自公众微信号：练英语听力